THE HERETICS OF THE FIRST CENTURY

 

SIMON MAGUS.

 

Simon Magus, the subject of many legends and much speculation. It is important to discriminate carefully what is told of him by the different primary authorities.

The Simon of the Acts of the Apostles.—Behind all stories concerning Simon lies what is related Acts VIII. 9-24, where we see Simon as a magician who exercised sorcery in Samaria with such success that the people universally accepted his claim to be "some great one", and accounted him " that power of God which is called great." We are further told that he was so impressed by the miracles wrought by Philip, that he asked and obtained admission to Christian baptism; but that he subsequently betrayed the hollowness of his conversion by offering money to Peter to obtain the power of conferring the gift of the Holy Ghost.

All subsequent accounts represent him as possessing magical power and coming personally into collision with Peter. The Acts say nothing as to his being a teacher of heretical doctrine; nor do they tell whether or not he broke off all connection with the Christian society after his exposure by Peter.

The Simon of Justin Martyr.—When Justin Martyr wrote his Apology the Simonian sect appears to have been formidable, for he speaks four times of their founder Simon, and undoubtedly identified him with the Simon of Acts. He states that he was a Samaritan, born at a village called Gitta; he describes him as a formidable magician, who came to Rome in the days of Claudius Caesar and made such an impression by his magical powers that he was honoured as a god, a statue being erected to him on the Tiber, between the two bridges, bearing the inscription "Simoni deo Sancto". Now in 1574 there was dug up in the place indicated by Justin, viz. the island in the Tiber, a marble fragment, apparently the base of a statue, bearing the inscription, "Semoni Sanco Deo Fidio", with the name of the dedicator. The coincidence is too remarkable to admit of any satisfactory explanation other than that Justin imagined a statue really dedicated to a Sabine deity to have been in honour of the heretic Simon. Justin further states that almost all the Samaritans, and some even of other nations, worshipped Simon, and acknowledged him as "the first God" ("above all principality, power, and dominion"), and that they held that a woman named Helena, formerly a prostitute, who went about with him, was his "first conception". In connection with Simon, Justin speaks of another Samaritan heretic, Menander, and states that he (Justin) had published a treatise against heresies.

When Irenaeus deals with Simon and Menander, his coincidences with Justin are too numerous and striking to leave any doubt that he here uses the work of Justin as his authority, and we get the following additional particulars : Simon claimed to be himself the highest power, that is to say, the Father who is over all; he taught that he was the same who among the Jews appeared as Son, in Samaria descended as Father, in other nations had walked as the Holy Spirit. He was content to be called by whatever name men chose to assign to him. Helen was a prostitute whom he had redeemed at Tyre and led about with him, saying that she was the first conception of his mind, the mother of all, by whom he had in the beginning conceived the making of angels and archangels. Knowing thus his will, she had leaped away from him, descended to the lower regions, and generated angels and powers by whom this world was made. But this "Ennoea" was detained in these lower regions by her offspring, and not suffered to return to the Father of whom they were ignorant.

In this account of Simon there is a large portion common to almost all forms of Gnostic myths, together with something special to this form. They have in common the place in the work of creation assigned to the female principle, the conception of the Deity; the ignorance of the rulers of this lower world with regard to the Supreme Power; the descent of the female (Sophia) into the lower regions, and her inability to return. Special to the Simonian tale is the identification of Simon himself with the Supreme, and of his consort Helena with the female principle, together with the doctrine of transmigration of souls, necessary to give these identifications a chance of acceptance, it not being credible that the male and female Supreme principles should first appear in the world at so late a stage in history.

It is possible that Justin's Simon was not identical with the contemporary of the Apostles, the name Simon being very common, and the Simon of the Acts being a century older than Justin. Moreover, Justin's Simon could hardly have carried his doctrine of transmigration of souls to the point of pretending that it was he himself who had appeared as Jesus of Nazareth, unless he had been born after our Lord's death. Hence it is the writer's opinion that the Simon described by Justin was his elder only by a generation; that he was a Gnostic teacher who had gained some followers at Samaria; and that Justin rashly identified him with the magician of the Acts of the Apostles.

The section on Simon in the Refutation of all Heresies, by Hippolytus, divides itself into two parts; the larger portion is founded on a work ascribed to Simon called the Great Apofasis, which we do not hear of through any other source than Hippolytus. But towards the close of the art. on Simon there is a section which can be explained on the supposition that Hippolytus is drawing directly from the source used by Irenaeus, viz. the anti-heretical treatise of Justin. In connection with this section must be considered the treatment of Simon in the lost earlier treatise of Hippolytus, which may be conjecturally gathered from the use made of it by Philaster and Epiphanius. Between these two there are verbal coincidences which prove that they are drawing from a common source. When this common matter is compared with the section in the Refutation, it is clear that Hippolytus was that source.

But one thing common to them was apparently not taken from Hippolytus. Both speak of the death of Simon, but apart from the section which contains the matter common to them and Hippolytus, and here they have no verbal coincidences. Both, however, know the story which became the received account of his death, viz. that to give the emperor a crowning proof of his magical skill he attempted to fly through the air, and, through the efficacy of the apostle's prayers, the demons who bore him were compelled to let him go, whereupon he perished miserably. We may conclude that the story known to Philaster and Epiphanius, though earlier than the end of the 4th cent, when they wrote, is of later origin than the beginning of the 3rd cent, when Hippolytus wrote. That Hippolytus did not find his account of Simon's death in Justin may be concluded from the place it occupies in his narrative, where it is in a kind of appendix to what is borrowed from Justin; and also because this form of the story is unknown to all other writers.

The Simon of the Clementines.—The Clementines, like Justin, identify Simon of Gitta with the Simon of Acts; but there is every reason to believe that they were merely following Justin. Justin has evidently direct knowledge of the Simonians, and regards them as formidable heretics; but in the Clementines the doctrines which Justin gives as Simonian have no prominence; and the introduction of Simon is merely a literary contrivance to bring in the theological discussions in which the author is interested.

The Simon of 19th Cent. Criticism.—The Clementine writings were produced in Rome early in 3rd cent, by members of the Elkesaite sect, one characteristic of which was hostility to Paul, whom they refused to recognize as an apostle. Baur first drew attention to this characteristic in the Clementines, and pointed out that in the disputations between Simon and Peter, some of the claims Simon is represented as making (e.g. that of having seen our Lord, though not in his lifetime, yet subsequently in vision) were really the claims of Paul; and urged that Peter's refutation of Simon was in some places intended as a polemic against Paul. The passages are found only in the Clementine Homilies, which may be regarded as one of the latest forms which these forgeries assumed. In the Clementine Recognitions there is abundance of anti-Paulism; but the idea does not appear to have occurred to the writer to dress up Paul under the mask of Simon. The idea started by Baur was pressed by his followers into the shape that, wherever in ancient documents Simon Magus is mentioned, Paul is meant. We are asked to believe that the Simon of Acts VIII. was no real character, but only a presentation of Paul. Simon claimed to be the power of God which is called Great; and Paul calls his gospel the power of God, and claims that the power of Christ rested in himself, and that he lived by the power of God. In Acts VIII. the power of bestowing the Holy Ghost, which Philip does not appear to have exercised, is clearly represented as the special prerogative of the apostles. When, therefore, Simon offered money for the power of conferring the Holy Ghost, it was really to obtain the rank of apostle. We are therefore asked to detect here a covert account of the refusal of the elder apostles to admit Paul's claim to rank with them, backed though it was by a gift of money for the poor saints in Jerusalem. Peter tells him that he has no lot in the matter, i.e. no part in the lot of apostleship; that he is still in the "gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity"—i.e. full of bitter hatred against Peter and not observant of the Mosaic Law. We are not to be surprised that St. Luke, Paulist though he was, should assert in his history this libel on his master. He knew the story to be current among the Jewish disciples, and wished to take the sting out of it by telling it in such a way as to represent Simon as a real person, distinct from Paul. So, having begun to speak of Paul in the beginning of c. VIII., he interpolates the episode of Philip's adventures, and does not return to speak of Paul until his reader's attention has been drawn off, so as not to be likely to recognize Paul under the mask of Simon.

It is not necessary to spend much time in pulling to pieces speculations exhibiting so much ingenuity, but so wanting in common sense. If, by way of nickname, a public character is called by a name not his own, common sense tells us that that must be a name to which discreditable associations are already known to attach. If a revolutionary agitator is called Catiline, that is because the name of Catiline is already associated with reckless and treasonable designs. It would be silly to conclude from the modern use of the nickname that there never had been such a person as Catiline, and that the traditional story of him must be so interpreted as best to describe the modern character. Further, while obscure 3rd-cent. heretics, fearing the odium of assailing directly one held in veneration through the rest of the Christian world, might resort to disguise, Paul's opponents, in his lifetime, had no temptation to resort to oblique attacks : they could say what they pleased against Paul of Tarsus without needing to risk being unintelligible by speaking of Simon of Gitta.

Lipsius, whose account of his predecessors' speculations we have abridged from his art. "Simon," in Schenkel's Bibel-Lexikon, exercises his own ingenuity in dealing with the legendary history of Simon. The ingenuity which discovers Paul in the Simon of the Acts has, of course, a much easier task in finding him in the Simon of the legends. But since the history, as it has come down to us, leaves much to be desired as an intentional libel on Paul, we must modify the legends so as best to adapt them to this object, and must then believe we have thus recovered the original form of the legend. Thus, the Homilies represent the final disputation between Peter and Simon to have occurred at Laodicea; but we must believe that the original form laid it at Antioch, where took place the collision between Peter and Paul (Gal. II.). The Clementines represent Simon as going voluntarily to Rome; but the original must surely have represented him as taken there as a prisoner by the Roman authorities, and so on. It is needless to examine minutely speculations vitiated by such methods of investigation.

The chronological order is—the historical personage comes first; then legends arise about him; then the use made of his name.

The proper order of investigation is, therefore, first to ascertain what is historical about Simon before discussing his legends. Now, it cannot reasonably be doubted that Simon of Gitta is an historical personage. The heretical sect which claimed him for its founder was regarded by Justin Martyr as most formidable; he speaks of it as predominant in Samaria and not unknown elsewhere; probably he had met members of it at Rome. Its existence is testified by Hegesippus and Celsus, who states that some of them were called Heleniani; and Clement of Alexandria, who states that one branch was called Eutychitae. It had become almost extinct in Origen's time, who doubts whether there were then 30 Simonians in the world; but we need not doubt its existence in Justin's time, nor the fact that it claimed Simon of Gitta as its founder. Writings in his name were in circulation, teste the Clementine Recognitions, and Epiphanius as confirming Hippolytus. The Simon of Acts is also a real person. If we read Acts VIII, which relates the preaching of Philip, in connexion with c. XXI., which tells of several days spent by Luke in Philip's house, we have the simple explanation of the insertion of the former chapter, that Luke gladly included in his history a narrative of the early preaching of the gospel communicated by an eye-witness. We need not ascribe to Luke any more recondite motive for relating the incident than that he believed it had occurred. There is no evidence that this Samaritan magician had obtained elsewhere any great notoriety; and there is every reason to think that all later writers derive their knowledge from the Acts of the Apostles.

We have already said that we believe Justin mistaken in identifying Simon of the Acts with Simon of Gitta, whom we take to have been a 2nd-cent. Gnostic teacher; but this identification is followed in the Clementines. In any case, we see that the whole manufacture of the latter story is later than Simon of Gitta, if not, as we believe, later than Justin Martyr. The anti-Paulists, therefore, who dressed Paul in the disguise of Simon, are more than a century later than any opponents Paul had in his lifetime, who, if they wished to fix a nickname on the apostle, were not likely to go to the Acts of the Apostles to look for one.

 

 

CERINTHUS

 

Cerinthus, a traditional opponent of St. John. It will probably always remain an open question whether his fundamentally Ebionite sympathies inclined him to accept Jewish rather than Gnostic additions. Modern scholarship has therefore preferred to view his doctrine as a fusing together and incorporating in a single system tenets collected from Jewish, Oriental, and Christian sources; but the nature of that doctrine is sufficiently clear, and its opposition to the instruction of St. John as decided as that of the Nicolaitanes.

Cerinthus was of Egyptian origin, and in religion a Jew. He received his education in the Judaeo- Philonic school of Alexandria. On leaving Egypt he visited Jerusalem, Caesarea, and Antioch. From Palestine he passed into Asia and there developed his heresy. Galatia, according to the same authority, was selected as his headquarters, whence he circulated his errors. On one of his Journeys he arrived at Ephesus, and met St. John in the public baths. The Apostle, hearing who was there, fled from the place as if for life, crying to those about him : "Let us flee, lest the bath fall in while Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is there."

The value of this and other such traditions is confessedly not great—that of the meeting with St. John in the bath is told of "Ebion" as well as of Cerinthus;—but a stratum of fact probably underlies them, and they at least indicate the feeling with which the "early Churchmen" regarded him. Epiphanius, by whom the majority are preserved, derived the principal portion of his statements partly from Irenaeus, and partly, as Lipsius has shown with high probability, from the now lost earlier work of Hippolytus on heresies.

His doctrines may be collected under the heads of his conception of the Creation, his Christology, and his Eschatology. His opinions upon two of these points, as preserved in existing works, support the usual view, that Cerinthus rather than Simon Magus is to be regarded as the predecessor of Judaeo-Christian Gnosticism.

Unlike Simon Magus and Menander, Cerinthus did not claim a sacred and mystic power. Caius the Presbyter can only assert against him that he pretended to angelic revelations. But his mind, like theirs, brooded over the co-existence of good and evil, spirit and matter; and his scheme seems intended to free the "unknown God" and the Christ from the bare imputation of infection through contact with nature and man.

Trained as he was in the philosophy of Philo, the Gnosis of Cerinthus did not of necessity compel him to start from opposition—in the sense of malignity—of evil to good, matter to spirit. He recognized opposition in the sense of difference between the one active perfect principle of life—God—and that lower imperfect passive existence which was dependent upon God; but this fell far short of malignity. He therefore conceived the material world to have been formed not by "the First God", but by angelic Beings of an inferior grade of Emanation. More precisely still he described the main agent as a certain Power separate and distinct from the "Principality" and ignorant of God's Fatherhood. He refused in the spirit of a true Jew to consider the " God of the Jews" identical with that author of the material world who was alleged by Gnostic teachers to be inferior and evil. He preferred to identify him with the Angel who delivered the Law. Neander and Ewald have pointed out that these are legitimate deductions from the teaching of Philo. The conception is evidently that of an age when hereditary and instinctive reverence for the law served as a check upon the system maker. Cerinthus is a long way from the bolder and more hostile schools of later Gnosticism.

The Christology is of an Ebionite cast and of the same transition character. It must not be assumed that it is but a form of the common Gnostic dualism, the double-personality afterwards elaborated by Basilides and Valentinus. Epiphanius, the chief source of information, is to many a mere uncritical compiler, sometimes following Hippolytus, sometimes Irenaeus. Now it is Christ Who is born of Mary and Joseph, now it is Jesus Who is born like other men, born of Joseph and Mary; He differs from others only in being more righteous, more prudent, and more wise; it is not till after baptism, when Jesus has reached manhood, that Christ, "that is to say, the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove", descends upon Jesus from above, revealing to Him and through Him to those after Him the "unknown Father". If, as Lipsius thinks, Irenaeus has here been influenced by the later Gnostic systems, and has altered the original doctrine of Cerinthus as given in Hippolytus, that doctrine would seem to be that he considered "Jesus" and "Christ" titles given indifferently to that One Personality Which was blessed by the descent of the Holy Spirit, the Power on high. This Power enables Jesus to perform miracles, but forsakes Him at His Passion, "flying heavenwards". So, again, it is Jesus, according to one passage of Epiphanius, Who dies and rises again, the Christ being spiritual and remaining impassible; according to a second, it is Christ Who dies, but is not yet risen, nor shall He rise till the general resurrection. That passage, however, which allows that the human body of Jesus had been raised from the dead separates its author completely from Gnostic successors.

The Chiliastic eschatology of Cerinthus is very clearly stated by Theodoret, Caius, Dionysius (Eus.), and Augustine, but not alluded to by Irenaeus. His silence need perhaps cause no surprise : Irenaeus was himself a Chiliast of the spiritual school, and in his notes upon Cerinthus he is only careful to mention what was peculiar to his system. The conception of Cerinthus was highly coloured. In his "dream" and "phantasy" the Lord shall have an earthly kingdom in which the elect are to enjoy pleasures, feasts, marriages, and sacrifices. Its capital is Jerusalem and its duration 1000 years : thereafter shall ensue the restoration of all things. Cerinthus derived this notion from Jewish sources. His notions of eschatology are radically Jewish : they may have originated, but do not contain, the Valentinian notion of a spiritual marriage between the souls of the elect and the Angels of the Pleroma.

Other peculiar features of his teaching may be noted. He held that if a man died unbaptized, another was to be baptized in his stead and in his name, that at the day of resurrection he might not suffer punishment and be made subject to Judgement.

He had learned at Alexandria to distinguish between the different degrees of inspiration, and attributed to different Angels the dictation severally of the words of Moses and of the Prophets; in this agreeing with Saturninus and the Ophites. He insisted upon a partial observance of the "divine" law, such as circumcision and the ordinances of the sabbath; resembling, in this severance of the genuine from the spurious elements of the law, the school which produced the Clementina and the Book of Baruch. He did not even scruple to call him who gave the law "not good", though the epithet may have been intended to express a charge of ethical narrowness rather than an identification of the Lawgiver with the doctrine of Marcion. Epiphanius admits that the majority of these opinions rest upon report and oral communication. This, coupled with the evident confusion of the statements recorded, makes it difficult to assign to Cerinthus any certain place in the history of heresy. He can only be regarded generally as a link connecting Judaism and Gnosticism.

The traditionary relations of Cerinthus to St. John have probably done more to rescue his name from oblivion than his opinions. In the course of time popular belief asserted that St. John had written his Gospel specially against the errors of Cerinthus, a belief curiously travestied by the counter-assertion that not St. John but Cerinthus himself was the author of both the Gospel and the Apocalypse. It is not difficult to account on subjective grounds for this latter assertion. The Chiliasm of Cerinthus was an exaggeration of language current in the earliest ages of the church; and no work in N.T. reproduced that language so ingenuously as the Apocalypse. The conclusion was easy that Cerinthus had but ascribed the Apocalypse
to the Apostle to obtain credit and currency for his own forgery. The "Alogi" argued upon similar grounds against the Fourth Gospel. It did not agree with the Synoptists, and though it disagreed in every possible way with the alleged doctrines of Cerinthus, yet the false-hearted author of the Apocalypse was, they asserted, certainly the writer of the Gospel.

The Cerinthians (known also as Merinthians) do not appear to have long survived. If any are identical with the Ebionites mentioned by Justin, some gradually diverged from their master in a retrograde direction; but the majority were engulfed in sects of greater note. One last allusion to them is found in the ecclesiastical rule applied to them by Ciennadius Massiliensis: "Ex istis si qui ad nos venerint, non requirendum ab eis utrum baptizati sint an non, sed hoc tantum, si credant in ecclesiae fidem, et baptizentur ecclesiastico baptismate".

 

 

MENANDER

 

Menander, a Samaritan false teacher in the early part of the 2nd cent. Our knowledge of him is probably all derived, either directly or indirectly, from Justin Martyr. What he tells directly is, that Menander was a native of the Samaritan town Capparatea, and a disciple of Simon, and, like him, had been instigated by the demons to deceive many by his magic arts; that he had had success of this kind at Antioch, where he had taught, and had persuaded his followers that they should not die; and that, when Justin wrote, some of them survived, holding this persuasion. Justin wrote a special treatise against heresies, and from this, in all probability, was derived the somewhat fuller account given by Irenaeus. According to this, Menander did not, like Simon, declare himself to be the chief power, but taught that that power was unknown to all. He gave the same account as Simon of the creation of the world—viz. that "it had been made by angels" who had taken their origin from the Ennoea of the supreme power. He put himself forward as having been sent by the invisible powers to mankind as a Saviour, enabling men, by the magical power which he taught them, to get the better of these creative angels. He taught that through baptism in his own name his disciples received a resurrection, and should thenceforward abide in immortal youth. Irenaeus evidently understood this language literally, and the history of heretical sects shows that it is not incredible that such promises may have been made; but the continuance of a belief which the experience of the past must have disproved indicates that a spiritual interpretation must have been found. Cyril of Jerusalem treats the denial of a literal resurrection of the body as a specially Samaritan heresy.

Irenaeus, having spoken of Valentinus and Marcion, says that the other Gnostics, as had been shewn, took their beginnings from Menander, the disciple of Simon; and there is every probability that it was from the "Samaritan" Justin that Irenaeus learned his pedigree of Gnosticism, viz. that it originated with the Samaritan Simon, and was continued by his disciple Menander, who taught at Antioch, and that there Saturninus (and, apparently, Basilides) learned from him.

The name Menandrianists occurs in the list of Hegesippus. Tertullian evidently knows only what he has learned from Irenaeus. The same may be said of all later writers, and it is scarcely worth while to mention the imaginary condemnation of these heretics by Lucius of Rome, invented "by Praedestinatus".

 

 

SATURNINUS

 

Saturninus . In the section of his work commencing I. 22 Irenaeus gives a list of heretics, apparently derived from Justin Martyr. The first two are the Samaritan heretics, Simon and Menander; the next, as having derived their doctrines from these, Saturninus and Basilides, who taught, the former in the Syrian Antioch, the latter in Egypt. Irenaeus says that Saturninus, like Menander, ascribed the ultimate origin of things to a Father unknown to all; and taught that this Father made angels, archangels, powers, authorities, but that the world and the things therein were made by a certain company of seven angels, in whom no doubt we are to recognize the rulers of the seven planetary spheres. He taught that man was the work of the same angels. They had seen a brilliant image descend from the Supreme Power, and had striven to detain it, but in vain; for it immediately shot back again. So they encouraged each other : "Let us make man after the image and after the likeness ". They made the man, but were too feeble to give him power to stand erect, and he lay on the ground wriggling like a worm until the Upper Power, taking compassion on him because he had been made "in Its likeness," sent a spark of life which raised him and made him live. Saturninus taught that after man's death this spark runs back to its kindred, while the rest of man is resolved into the elements whence he was made.

The same creation myth is reported by Irenaeus to have been included in the system commonly known as Ophite. But according to the Ophite story it is not the Supreme Power, but Ialdabaoth, the chief of the creative company, who bestows the breath of life; and these angels say, as in Genesis, "Let us make man after our image."

We may count Saturninus as the originator of the myth, for the Ophite version has marks of less simplicity and originality. Saturninus further taught that the God of the Jews was one of the seven creator angels. He and his company were in constant warfare with Satan and a company of evil angels. So, likewise, there were two distinct species of men, the bad ever aided by the demons in their conflicts with the good. Then the Supreme Father sent a Saviour to destroy the power of the God of the Jews and the other Archons; and to save those who had the spark of life in them—that is to say, the good. This Saviour had no human birth or human body, and was only a man in appearance.

Saturninus ascribed the Jewish prophecies, some to the creator angels and some to Satan. This is one of several points of coincidence between the reports given by Irenaeus of the teaching of Saturninus and of the Ophites. These do not ascribe any of the prophecies to Satan, but Irenaeus gives the scheme according to which they distributed them among the several angels. Saturninus does not appear to have left any writings. His sect is named by Justin Martyr and by Hegesippus. No later heresiologist appears to know anything about him beyond what he learned from Irenaeus; and Irenaeus probably derived all his knowledge from Justin Martyr.

 

BASILIDES

 

Basilides, the founder of one of the semi-Christian sects, commonly called Gnostic, which sprang up in the early part of the 2nd cent.

I. Biography.—He called himself a disciple of one Glaucias, alleged to be an interpreter of St. Peter. He taught at Alexandria : Hippolytus in general terms mentions Egypt. Indeed Epiphanius enumerates various places in Egypt visited by Basilides; but subsequently allows it to appear that his knowledge of the districts where Basilidians existed in his own time was his only evidence. If the Alexandrian Gnostic is the Basihdes quoted in the Acts of the Disputation of Archelaus and Mani, he was reported to have preached in Persia. Nothing more is known of his life. According to Epiphanius, he had been a fellow- disciple of Menander with Saturnilus at Antioch in Syria; but this is evidently an arbitrary extension of Irenaeus's remarks on the order of doctrines to personal relations. If the view of the doctrines of Basilides taken in this article is correct, they afford no good grounds for supposing him to have had a Syrian education. Gnostic ideas derived originally from Syria were sufficiently current at Alexandria, and the foundation of what is distinctive in his thoughts is Greek.

Several independent authorities indicate the reign of Hadrian (a.d. 117-138) as the time when Basilides flourished. To prove that the heretical sects were "later than the Catholic church," Clement of Alexandria marks out early Christian history into different periods : he assigns Christ's own teaching to the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius; that of the apostles, of St. Paul at least, ends, he says, in the time of Nero; whereas " the authors of the sects arose later, about the times of the emperor Hadrian, and continued quite as late as the age of the elder Antoninus". He gives as examples Basilides, Valentinus, and (if the text is sound) Marcion, taking occasion by the way to throw doubts on the claims set up for the two former as having been instructed by younger contemporaries of St. Peter and St. Paul respectively, by pointing out that about half a century lay between the death of Nero and the accession of Hadrian. Again Eusebius places Saturninus and Basilides under Hadrian. Yet his language about Carpocrates a few lines further on suggests a doubt whether he had any better evidence than a fallacious inference from their order in Irenaeus. He was acquainted with the refutation of Basilides by Agrippa Castor; but it is not clear, as is sometimes assumed, that he meant to assign both writers to the same reign. His chronicle (Armenian) at the year 17 of Hadrian (a.d. 133) has the note "The heresiarch Basilides appeared at these times"; which Jerome, as usual, expresses rather more definitely. A similar statement without the year is repeated by Jerome where an old corrupt reading (mortuus for moratus) led some of the earlier critics to suppose they had found a limit for the date of Basilides's death. Theodoret evidently follows Eusebius. Earliest of all, but vaguest, is the testimony of Justin Martyr. Writing in or soon after a.d. 145, he refers briefly to the founders of heretical sects, naming first the earliest, Simon and Menander, followers of whom were still alive; and then apparently the latest, Marcion, himself still alive. The probable inference that the other great heresiarchs, including Basilides, were by this time dead receives some confirmation from a passage in his Dialogue against Trypho, a later but probably not much later book, where the "Marcians", Valentinians, Basilidians, Saturnilians, "and others", are enumerated, apparently in inverse chronological order : the growth of distinct and recognized sects implies at least the lapse of some time since the promulgation of their several creeds. It seems therefore impossible to place Basilides later than Hadrian's time; and, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, we may trust the Alexandrian Clement's statement that his peculiar teaching began at no earlier date.

II. Writings.—According to Agrippa Castor, Basilides wrote "twenty-fourbooks on the Gospel." These are no doubt the Exegetica, from the twenty-third of which Clement gives an extract. The same work is doubtless intended by the "treatises " (tractatuum), the thirteenth book of which is cited in the Acta Archelai, if the same Basilides is referred to. The authorship of an actual Gospel, of the "apocryphal" class, is likewise attributed to Basilides on plausible grounds. The word "taken in hand" in Luke I. 1 gives Origen occasion to distinguish between the four evangelists, who wrote by inspiration, and other writers who "took in hand" to produce Gospels. He mentions some of these, and proceeds "Basilides had even the audacity" to write a Gospel according to Basilides; that is, he went beyond other fabricators of Gospels by affixing his own name. This passage is freely translated, though without mention of Origen's name, by Ambrose; and is probably Jerome's authority in an enumeration of the chief apocryphal Gospels; for among the six others which he mentions the four named by Origen recur, including that of the Twelve Apostles, otherwise unknown. Yet no trace of a Gospel by Basilides exists elsewhere; and it seems most probable either that Origen misunderstood the nature of the Exegetica, or that they were sometimes known under the other name.

An interesting question remains, in what relation the Exegetica stand to the exposition of doctrine which fills eight long chapters of Hippolytus. Basilides (or the Basilidians), we are told, defined the Gospel as "the knowledge of supermundane things", and the idea of the progress of "the Gospel" through the different orders of beings plays a leading part in the Basilidian doctrine. But there is not the slightest reason to think that the "Gospel" here spoken of was a substitute for the Gospel in a historical sense, any more than in St. Paul's writings. Indeed several passages, with their allusions to Rom. V. 14, vVIII. 19, 22, 23 ; I. Cor. II. 13 ; II. Cor. XII. 4 ; Eph. I. 21, III. 3, 5, 10, prove that the writer was throughout thinking of St. Paul's "mystery of the Gospel". Hippolytus states distinctly that the Basilidian account of "all things concerning the Saviour" subsequent to "the birth of Jesus "agreed with that given in "the Gospels". It may therefore be reasonably conjectured that his exposition, if founded on a work of Basilides himself, is a summary of the opening book or books of the Exegetica, describing that part of the redemptive process, or of the preparation for it, which was above and antecedent to the phenomenal life of Jesus. The comments on the Gospel itself, probably containing much ethical matter, as we may gather from Clement, would have little attraction for Hippolytus.

The certain fragments of the Exegetica have been collected by Grabe, followed by Massuet and Stieren in their editions of Irenaeus; but he passes over much in Clement which assuredly has no other origin. A single sentence quoted in Origen's commentary on Romans, and given further on, is probably from the same source. In an obscure and brief fragment preserved in a Catena on Job, Origen implies the existence of Odes by Basilides and Valentinus. No other writings of Basilides are mentioned.

III. Authenticity of the Hippolytean Extracts.—In endeavouring to form a clear conception of the work and doctrine of Basilides, we are met at the outset by a serious difficulty. The different accounts were never easy to harmonize, and some of the best critics of the first half of the 19th cent, considered them to refer to two different systems of doctrine. But till 1851 their fragmentary nature suggested that the apparent incongruities might conceivably be due only to the defects of our knowledge, and seemed to invite reconstructive boldness on the part of the historian. The publication of Hippolytus's Refutation of all Heresies in 1851 placed the whole question on a new footing. Hardly any one has ventured to maintain the possibility of reconciling its ample statements about Basilides with the reports of Irenaeus and Epiphanius. Which account then most deserves our confidence?

Before attempting to answer this question it is well to enumerate the authorities. They are Agrippa Castor as cited by Eusebius, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, the anonymous supplement to Tertullian, de Praescriptione, the Refutation of Hippolytus, Epiphanius, Philaster, and Theodoret, and possibly the Acta Archelai, besides a few scattered notices which may be neglected here. This ample list shrinks, however, into small dimensions at the touch of criticism.

Theodoret's chapter is a disguised compilation from previous Greek writers. The researches of Lipsius have proved that Epiphanius followed partly Irenaeus, partly the lost Compendium of Hippolytus, this same work being also the common source of the Latin authors pseudo-Tertullian and Philaster.

Our ultimate authorities therefore are Irenaeus (or the unknown author from whom he took this section of his work), the Compendium of Hippolytus (represented by Epiphanius, Philaster, and pseudo-Tertullian), Clement and the Refutation of Hippolytus, together with a short statement by Agrippa Castor, and probably a passing reference and quotation in the Acts of Archelaus.

It is now generally allowed that the notices of Clement afford the surest criterion by which to test other authorities. Not only does his whole tone imply exact personal knowledge, but he quotes a long passage directly from the Exegetica. Is then his account, taken as a whole, consistent with other accounts? And does it agree best with the reports of Irenaeus and Hippolytus in his younger days, or with the elaborate picture drawn by Hippolytus at a later time? This second question has received opposite answers from recent critics. A majority have given the preference to Hippolytus; while Hilgenfeld (who three years before, in his earliest book, the treatise On the Clementine Homilies and Recognitions, had described the Basilidian system from the then known records, endeavouring with perverse ingenuity to show their virtual consistency with each other) has prided himself on not being dazzled by the new authority, whom he holds to be in effect describing not Basilides but a late development of his sect; and Lipsius takes the same view.

It should be observed at the outset that the testimony of Clement is not quite so homogeneous as is generally assumed. Six times he criticises doctrines of "Basilides" himself; eight times he employs the ambiguous plural. Are we to suppose a distinction here, or is the verbal difference accidental? Both views might be maintained. The quotation from the Exegetica is a piece of moral argument on Providence, wholly free from the technical terms of Gnostic mythology. In the succeeding discussion Clement eventually uses plurals, which might equally imply that he employs both forms indifferently, or that he distinguishes Basilides from his followers within the limits of a single subject.

The other references to "Basilides" are likewise of a distinctly ethical character, while several of the passages containing the plural name abound in technical language. Yet the distinction is not absolute on either side. "Basilides" furnishes the terms "the Ogdoad", "the election", "supermundane"; while such subjects as the nature of faith, the relation of the passions to the animal soul, and the meaning of Christ's saying about eunuchs, occur in the other group, though they remind us rather of Basilides himself. In the last passage, moreover, the ambiguous plural is applied to a quotation intended to shame by contrast the immoral Basilidians of Clement's own time; and a similar quotation from Basilides's son Isidore immediately follows; the authors of the two quotations being designated as "the forefathers of their (the late Basilidians') doctrines". It is hard to believe that mere anonymous disciples, though of an earlier date, would be appealed to in this manner, or would take precedence of the master's own son. On the whole, there can be no reasonable doubt that all the doctrinal statements in Clement concern Basilides himself, when not distinctly otherwise expressed, and depend on direct knowledge of the Exegetica. With good reason therefore they may be assumed as a trustworthy basis for the whole investigation. The most doubtful instances are the passages cited presently on the Baptism and on the descent of the Minister, i.e. the Holy Spirit.

The range of possible contact between the quotations and reports of Clement and any of the other authorities is not large. His extant writings contain nothing like an attempt to describe the Basilidian System. The Stromates, which furnish the quotations from Basilides, expressly limit themselves to moral and practical questions; and reserve for a future work, i.e. the lost Hypotyposes, the exposition of the higher doctrine belonging to the department of knowledge which the Stoics called Physics, beginning with the Creation and leading up to Theology proper. Now it is precisely to this latter department that the bulk of Gnostic speculation would belong, and especially such theories as Hippolytus ascribes to Basilides; and moreover Clement distinctly promises that in the course of that loftier investigation he will "set forth in detail the doctrines of the heretic, and endeavour to refute them to the best of his power". We have therefore no right to expect in the Stromates any cosmological or even theological matter respecting Basilides except such as may accidentally adhere to the ethical statements, the subjects treated of in the various books "against all heresies" being formally excluded by Clement. His sphere being thus distinct from theirs, the marked coincidences of language that we do find between him and Hippolytus afford a strong presumption that, if the one account is authentic, the other is so likewise. Within the narrow limits of Clement's information we meet with the phrases "primitive medley and confusion", and on the other hand "separation" (differentiation) and restoration ;with a division of the universe into stages, and prominence given to the sphere of "super-mundane "things; with an "Ogdoad" and an "Archon"; all of these terms being conspicuous and essential in the Hippolytean representation. Above all, we hear of the amazement of the Archon on receiving "the utterance of the ministering Spirit" or "Minister" as being that fear of the Lord whichis called the beginning of wisdom; the utterance itself being implied to be a Gospel; while Hippolytus describes the same passage as interpreted of the amazement of the Great Archon on receiving " the Gospel", a revelation of things unknown, through his Son, who had received it from a "power" within the Holy Spirit. The coincidences are thus proportionately great, and there are no contradictions to balance them : so that it would require strong evidence to rebut the conclusion that Clement and Hippolytus had the same materials before them. Such evidence does not exist. The coincidences between Clement and the Irenaean tradition are limited to the widely spread "Ogdoad" and a single disputable use of the word "Archon", and there is no similarity of doctrines to make up for the absence of verbal identity. The only tangible argument against the view that Hippolytus describes the original system of Basilides is its Greek rather than Oriental character, which is assumed to be incompatible with the fundamental thoughts of a great Gnostic leader. We shall have other opportunities of inquiring how far the evidence supports this wide generalization as to Gnosticism at large. As regards Basilides personally, the only grounds for expecting from him an Oriental type of doctrine are the quotation in the Acts of Archelaus, which will be discussed further on, and the tradition of his connexion with Saturninus of Antioch, which we have already seen to be founded on a misconception. The fragmentary notices and extracts in Clement, admitted on all hands to be authentic, are steeped in Greek philosophy; so that the Greek spirit of the Hippolytean representation is in fact an additional evidence for its faithfulness. It may yet be asked, Did Hippolytus consult the work of Basilides himself, or did he depend on an intermediate reporter? His own language, though not absolutely decisive, favours the former alternative. On the one hand it may be urged that he makes no mention of a book, that occasionally he quotes by the words "they say", "according to them", and that his exposition is immediately preceded by the remark, "Let us then see how openly both Basilides and [his son] Isidore and the whole band of them not merely calumniate Matthias [from whom they professed to have received records of Christ's secret teaching], but also the Saviour Himself ". Against these indications may be set the ten places where Basilides is referred to singly, and the very numerous quotations by the words "he says". It is true that Greek usage permits the occasional use of the singular even when no one Writer or book is intended. But in this case the most natural translation is borne out by some of the language quoted. The first person singular proves the book in Hippolytus's hands to have been written by an original speculator; yet this very quotation is immediately followed by a comment on it with the third person plural which here at least can mean no more than that Hippolytus held the Basilidians of his own day responsible for the doctrines of his author. The freshness and power of the whole section, wherever we touch the actual words of the author, strongly confirm the impression that he was no other than Basilides himself. Thus we are led independently to the conclusion suggested by the correspondence with the information of Clement, whom we know to have drawn from the fountain-head, the Exegetica. The fancy that the book used by Hippolytus was itself the Traditions of Matthias has nothing to recommend it. The whole form is unlike that which analogy would lead us to expect in such a production. If it was quoted as an authority in the Exegetica, the language of Hippolytus is justified. Nor is there anything in this inconsistent with the fact vouched for by Clement that Basilides claimed to have been taught by Glaucias, an "interpreter" of St. Peter.

We shall therefore assume that the eight chapters of Hippolytus represent faithfully though imperfectly the contents of part at least of the Exegetica of Basilides; and proceed to describe his doctrine on their authority, using likewise the testimony of Clement wherever it is available.

IV. Doctrine.—Basilides asserts the beginning of all things to have been pure nothing. He uses every device of language to express absolute nonentity. He will not allow the primitive nothing to be called even "unspeakable": that, he says, would be naming it, and it is above every name that is named. Nothing then being in existence, "not-being God" (or Deity, the article is omitted here) willed to make a not-being world out of not-being things. Once more great pains are "taken to obviate the notion that willing " implied any mental attribute whatever. Also the world so made was not the extended and differentiated world to which we gave the name, but "a single seed containing within itself all the seed-mass of the world", the aggregate of the seeds of all its forms and substances, as the mustard seed contains the branches and leaves of the tree, or the peahen's egg the brilliant colour of the full-grown peacock. This was the one origin of all future growths; their seeds lay stored up by the will of the not-being God in the single world-seed, as in the new-born babe its future teeth and the resemblances to its father which are thereafter to appear. Its own origin too from God was not a putting-forth, as a spider puts forth its web from itself. (By this assertion, on which Hippolytus dwells with emphasis, every notion of "emanation" is expressly repudiated.) Nor was there an antecedent matter, like the brass or wood wrought by a mortal man. The words "Let there be light, and there was light" convey the whole truth. The light came into being out of nothing but the voice of the Speaker "and the Speaker was not, and that which came into being was not". What then was the first stage of growth of the seed? It had within itself "a tripartite sonship, in all things consubstantial with the not-being God". Part of the sonship was subtle of substance, part coarse of substance, part needing purification. Simultaneously with the first beginning of the seed the subtle sonship burst through and mounted swiftly up "like a wing or a thought" till it reached the not-being God; "for toward Him for His exceeding beauty and grace every kind of nature yearns, each in its own way".

The coarse sonship could not mount up of itself, but it took to itself as a wing the Holy Spirit, each bearing up the other with mutual benefit, even as neither a bird can soar without wing, nor a wing without a bird. But when it came near the blessed and unutterable place of the subtle sonship and the not-being God, it could take the Holy Spirit no further, as not being consubstantial or of the same nature with itself. There, then, retaining and emitting downwards the fragrance of the sonship like a vessel that has once held ointment, the Holy Spirit remained, as a firmament dividing things above the world from "the world " itself below.

The third sonship continued still within the heap of the seed-mass. But out of the heap burst forth into being the Great Archon, "the head of the world, a beauty and greatness and power that cannot be uttered". He too raised himself aloft till he reached the firmament which he supposed to be the upward end of all things. Then he became wiser and every way better than all other cosmical things except the sonship left below, which he knew not to be far better than himself. So he turned to create the world in its several parts. But first he "made to himself and begat out of the things below a son far better and wiser than himself", for thus the not-being God had willed from the first; and smitten with wonder at his son's beauty, he set him at his right hand. "This is what they call the Ogdoad, where the Great Archon is sitting". Then all the heavenly or ethereal creation (apparently included in the Ogdoad), as far down as the moon, was made by the Great Archon, inspired by his wiser son. Again another Archon arose out of the seed-mass, inferior to the first Archon, but superior to all else below except the sonship; and he likewise made to himself a son wiser than himself, and became the creator and governor of the aerial world. This region is called the Hebdomad.

On the other hand, in the heap and seed-mass, constituting our own (the terrestrial) stage, those things that come to pass come to pass according to nature, as having been previously uttered by Him Who hath planned the fitting time and form and manner of utterance of the things that were to be uttered : and these things have no one to rule over them, or exercise care for them, or create them : for sufficient for them is that plan which the not-being One planned when He was making" [the seed-mass].

Such is the original cosmogony as conceived by Basilides, and it supplies the base for his view of the Gospel, as well as of the interval before the coming of the Gospel into the world. When the whole world had been finished, and the things above the world, and nothing was lacking, there remained in the seed-mass the third sonship, which had been left behind to do good and receive good in the seed; and it was needful that the sonship thus left behind should be revealed and restored up yonder above the Limitary Spirit to join the subtle and imitative sonship and the not-being One, as it is written, "And the creation itself groaneth together and travaileth together, expecting the revelation of the sons of God". Now we the spiritual, he said, are sons left behind here to order and to inform and to correct and to perfect the souls whose nature it is to abide in this stage. Till Moses, then, from Adam sin reigned, as it is written; for the Great Archon reigned, he whose end reaches to the firmament, supposing himself to be God alone, and to have nothing above him, for all things remained guarded in secret silence; this is the mystery which was not made known to the former generations. But in those times the Great Archon, the Ogdoad, was king and lord, as it appeared, of all things : and moreover, the Hebdomad was king and lord of this stage; and the Ogdoad is unutterable, but the Hebdomad utterable. This, the Archon of the Hebdomad, is he who spoke to Moses and said, "I am the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and the name of God did I not make known to them" (for so, says Hippolytus, they will have it read), that is, of the unutterable God who is Archon of the Ogdoad. All the prophets, therefore, that were before the Saviour, spoke from that source.

This short interpretation of the times before Christ, which has evidently suffered in the process of condensation by Hippolytus, carries us at once to the Gospel itself. "Becaustherefore it was needful that we the children of God should be revealed, concerning whom the creation groaned and travailed, expecting the revelation, the Gospel came into the world, and passed through every principality and power and lordship, and every name that is named". There was still no downward coming from above, no departure of the ascended sonship from its place; but "from below from the formlessness of the heap the powers penetrated up to the sonship" (i.e. probably throughout the scale the power of each stage penetrated to the stage immediately above), and so thoughts were caught from above as naphtha catches fire at a distance without contact. Thus the power within the Holy Spirit "conveyed the thoughts of the sonship, as they flowed and drifted to the son of the Great Archon"; and he in turn instructed the Great Archon himself, by whose side he was sitting.

Then first the Great Archon learned that he was not God of the universe, but had himself come into being, and had above him yet higher beings; he discovered with amazement his own past ignorance, and confessed his sin in having magnified himself. This fear of his, said Basilides, was that fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom (wisdom to "separate and discern and perfect and restore"). From him and the Ogdoad the Gospel had next to pass to the Hebdomad. Its Archon's son received the light from the son of the Great Archon, he became himself enlightened, and declared the Gospel to the Archon of the Hebdomad, and he too feared and confessed, and all that was in the Hebdomad received the light.

It remained only that the formlessness of our own region should be enlightened, and that the hidden mystery should be revealed to the third sonship left behind in the formlessness, as to "one born out of due time". The light came down from the Hebdomad upon Jesus the Son of Mary. That this descent of the light was represented as taking place at the Annunciation, and not merely at the Baptism, is clearly implied in the express reference to the words of the angel in Luke I. 35, "A Holy Spirit shall come upon thee," which are explained to mean" that [? spirit] which passed from the sonship through the Limitary Spirit to the Ogdoad and the Hebdomad till it reached Mary " (the interpretation of the following words, "And a power of the Most High shall overshadow thee", appears to be hopelessly corrupt). On the other hand, when it is described as a result of the descent of the light from the Hebdomad "upon Jesus the Son of Mary", that He "was enlightened, being kindled in union with the light that shone on Him", the allusion to the traditional light at the Baptism can hardly be questioned; more especially when we read in Clement's Excerpta that the Basilidians interpreted the dove to be "the Minister". the revealing "power" within the Holy Spirit.

From the Nativity Hippolytus's exposition passes on at once to its purpose in the future and the final consummation. The world holds together as it is now, we learn, until all the sonship that has been left behind, to give benefits to the souls in formlessness and to receive benefits by obtaining distinct form, follows Jesus and mounts up and is purified and becomes most subtle, so that it can mount by itself like the first sonship; "for it has all its power naturally established in union with the light that shone down from above". When every sonship has arrived above the Limitary Spirit, "then the creation shall find mercy, for till now it groans and is tormented and awaits the revelation of the sons of God, that all the men of the sonship may ascend from hence". When this has come to pass, God will bring upon the whole world the Great Ignorance, that everything may remain according to nature, and that nothing may desire aught that is contrary to nature. Thus all the souls of this stage, whose nature it is to continue immortal in this stage alone, will remain without knowledge of anything higher and better than this, lest they suffer torment by craving for things impossible, like a fish desiring to feed with the sheep on the mountains, for such a desire would have been to them destruction. All things are indestructible while they abide in their place, but destructible if they aim at overleaping the bounds of Nature. Thus the Great Ignorance will overtake even the Archon of the Hebdomad, that grief and pain and sighing may depart from him : yea, it will overtake the Great Archon of the Ogdoad, and all the creations subject to him, that nothing may in any respect crave for aught that is against nature or may suffer pain. "And in this wise shall be the Restoration, all things according to nature having been founded in the seed of the universe in the beginning, and being restored at their due seasons. And that each thing has its due seasons is sufficiently proved by the Saviour's words, 'My hour is not yet come', and by the beholding of the star by the Magi; for even He Himself was subject to the 'genesis' [nativity] of the periodic return, here used in the limited astrological sense, though above as 'restoration' generally of stars and hours, as foreordained in the great heap".

"He," adds Hippolytus, evidently meaning our Lord, "is [in the Basilidian view] the inner spiritual man in the natural [psychical] man; that is, a sonship leaving its soul here, not a mortal soul, but one remaining in its present place according to nature, just as the first sonship up above hath left the Limitary Holy Spirit in a fitting place; He having at that time been clothed with a soul of His own". These last two remarks, on the subjection to seasons and on the ultimate abandonment of the immortal but earth-bound soul by the ascending sonship or spiritual man, taking place first in the Saviour and then in the other "sons of God," belong in strictness to an earlier part of the scheme; but they may have been placed here by Basilides himself, to explain the strange consummation of the Great Ignorance. The principle receives perhaps a better illustration from what purports to be an exposition of the Basilidian view of the Gospel, with which Hippolytus concludes his report.

"According to them," he says, "the Gospel is the knowledge of things above the world, which knowledge the Great Archon understood not : when then it was shown to him that there exists the Holy Spirit, that is the Limitary Spirit, and the sonship and a God Who is the author of all these things, even the not-being One, he rejoiced at what was told him, and was exceeding glad : this is according to them the Gospel". Here Hippolytus evidently takes too generally the special form under which Basilides represented the Gospel as made known to the Great Archon. Nor, when he proceeds to say that "Jesus according to them was born in the manner that we have previously mentioned", is it clear that Basilides gave a different
account of the Nativity itself from that accepted by the church, because he gave a peculiar interpretation to the angel's words. "After the Nativity already made known," adds Hippolytus, "all incidents concerning the Saviour came to pass according to them [the Basilidians] as they are described in the Gospels". But all this is only introductory to the setting forth of the "primary principle. These things "(apparently the incidents of our Lord's life) " are come to pass that Jesus might become the first fruits of the sorting of the things confused". For since the world is divided into the Ogdoad and the Hebdomad and this stage in which we dwell, where is the formlessness, "it was necessary that the things confused should be sorted by the division of Jesus. That therefore suffered which was His bodily part, which was of the formlessness, and it was restored into the formlessness; and that rose up which was His psychical part, which was of the Hebdomad, and it was restored into the Hebdomad; and he raised up that which belonged to the summit where sits the Great Archon, and it abode beside the Great Archon : and He bore up on high that which was of the Limitary Spirit, and it abode in the Limitary Spirit; and the third sonship, which had been left behind in [the heap] to give and receive benefits, through Him was purified and mounted up to the blessed sonship, passing through them all."

"Thus Jesus is become the first fruits of the sorting; and the Passion has come to pass for no other purpose than this, that the things confused might be sorted." For the whole sonship left behind in the formlessness must needs be sorted in the same manner as Jesus Himself hath been sorted. Thus, as Hippolytus remarks a little earlier, the whole theory consists of the confusion of a seed-mass, and of the sorting and restoration into their proper places of things so confused.

Clement's contributions to our knowledge of Basilides refer chiefly, as has been said, to the ethical side of his doctrine. Here "Faith" evidently played a considerable part. In itself it was defined by "them of Basilides" as "an assent of the soul to any of the things which do not excite sensation, because they are not present"; the phrase being little more than a vague rendering of Heb. XI. i, in philosophical language.

From another unfortunately corrupt passage it would appear that Basilides accumulated forms of dignity in celebration of faith. But the eulogies were in vain, Clement intimates, because they abstained from setting forth faith as the "rational assent of a soul possessing free will". They left faith a matter of "nature", not of responsible choice. So again, while contrasting the honour shown by the Basilidians to faith with its disparagement in comparison with "knowledge" by the Valentinians, he accuses them of regarding it as "natural," and referring it to "the election" while they apparently considered it to "discover doctrines without demonstration by an intellective apprehension". He adds that according to them (ot there is at once a faith and an election of special character in each "stage", the mundane faith of every nature follows in accordance with its supermundane election, and for each (? being or stage) the [Divine] gift of his (or its) faith corresponds with his (or its) hope. What "hope" was intended is not explained : probably it is the range of legitimate hope, the limits of faculty accessible to the beings inhabiting this or that "stage". It is hardly likely that Clement would have censured unreservedly what appears here as the leading principle of Basilides, the Divine resignment of a limited sphere of action to each order of being, and the Divine bestowal of proportionally limited powers of apprehending God upon the several orders, though it is true that Clement himself specially cherished the thought of an upward progress from one height of being to another, as part of the Divine salvation. Doubtless Basilides pushed election so far as to sever a portion of mankind from the rest, as alone entitled by Divine decree to receive the higher enlightenment. In "this sense it must have been that he called the election a stranger to the world, as being by nature supermundane"; while Clement maintained that no man can by nature be a stranger to the world. It is hardly necessary to point out how closely the limitation of spheres agrees with the doctrine on which the Great Ignorance is founded, and the supermundane election with that of the Third Sonship.

The same rigid adhesion to the conception of natural fixity, and inability to accept Christian beliefs, which transcend it, led Basilides to confine the remission of sins to those which are committed involuntarily and in ignorance; as though, says Clement, it were a man and not God that bestowed the gift. A like fatalistic view of Providence is implied in the language held by Basilides in reference to the sufferings of Christian martyrs. In this instance we have the benefit of verbal extracts, though unfortunately their sense is in parts obscure. So far as they go, they do not bear out the allegations of Agrippa Castor that Basilides taught that the partaking of food offered to idols, and the heedless abjuration of the faith in time of persecution was a thing indifferent; and of Origen, that he depreciated the martyrs, and treated lightly the sacrificing to heathen deities. The impression seems to have arisen partly from a misunderstanding of the purpose of his argument, partly from the actual doctrine and practices of later Basilidians; but it may also have had some justification in incidental words which have not been preserved. Basilides is evidently contesting the assumption, probably urged in controversy against his conception of the justice of Providence, that the sufferers in "what are called tribulations" are to be regarded as innocent, simply because they suffer for their Christianity. He suggests that some are in fact undergoing punishment for previous unknown sins, while "by the goodness of Him Who brings events to pass" they are allowed the comfort of suffering as Christians, not subject to the rebuke as the adulterer or the murderer"; and if there be any who suffers without previous sin, it will not be "by the design of an [adverse] power" but as suffers the babe who appears to have committed no sin.

The next quotation attempts at some length an exposition of this comparison with the babe. The obvious distinction is drawn between sin committed in act and the capacity for sin; the infant is said to receive a benefit when it is subjected to suffering, "gaining" many hardships. So it is, he says, with the suffering of a perfect man, for his not having sinned must not be set down to himself; though he has done no evil, he must have willed evil; "for I will say anything rather than call Providence evil." He did not shrink, Clement says, and the language seems too conclusive, from applying his principle even to the Lord. "If, leaving all these arguments, you go on to press me with certain persons, saying, for instance, 'Such an one sinned therefore, for such an one suffered', if you will allow me I will say, 'He did not sin, but he is like the suffering babe'; but if you force the argument with greater violence, I will say that any man whom you may choose to name is a man, and that God is righteous; for 'no one', as it has been said, 'is clear of defilement'." He likewise brought in thenotion of sin in a past stage of existence suffering its penalty here, "the elect soul" suffering "honourably through martyrdom, and the soul of another kind being cleansed by an appropriate punishment."

To this doctrine of metempsychosis "the Basilidians" are likewise said to have referred the language of the Lord about requital to the third and fourth generations; Origen states that Basilides himself interpreted Rom. VII. 9 in this sense, "The Apostle said, 'I lived without a law once', that is, before I came into this body, I lived in such a form of body as was not under a law, that of a beast namely, or a bird"; and elsewhere Origen complains that he deprived men of a salutary fear by teaching that transmigrations are the only punishments after death. What more Basilides taught about Providence as exemplified in martyrdoms is not easily brought together from Clement's rather confused account. He said that one part of what is called the will of God (i.e. evidently His own mind towards lower beings, not what He would have their mind to be) is to love (or rather perhaps be satisfied with) all things because all things preserve a relation to the universe, and another to despise nothing, and a third to hate no single thing.

In the same spirit pain and fear were described as natural accidents of things, as rust of iron. In another sentence Providence seems to be spoken of as set in motion by the Archon; by which perhaps was meant that the Archon was the unconscious agent who carried into execution (within his own "stage") the long dormant original counsels of the not-being God. The view of the harmony of the universe just referred to finds expression, with a reminiscence of a famous sentence of Plato , in a saying that Moses "set up one temple of God and an only-begotten world".

We have a curious piece of psychological theory in the account of the passions attributed to the Basilidians . They are accustomed, Clement says, to call the passions Appendages, stating that these are certain spirits which have a substantial existence, having been appended (or "attached", or "adherent, various kinds of close external contact being expressed by to the rational soul in a certain primitive turmoil and confusion, and that again other bastard and alien natures of spirits grow upon these, as of a wolf, an ape, a lion, a goat, whose characteristics, becoming perceptible in the region of the soul, assimilate the desires of the son to the animals; for they imitate the actions of those whose characteristics they wear, and not only acquire intimacy with the impulses and impressions of the irrational animals, but even imitate the movements and beauties of plants, because they likewise wear the characteristics of plants appended to them; and [the passions] have also characteristics of habit [derived from stones], as the hardness of adamant. In the absence of the context it is impossible to determine the precise meaning and origin of this singular theory. It was probably connected with the doctrine of metempsychosis, which seemed to find support in Plato's Timaeus, and was cherished by some neo-Pythagoreans later in the 2nd cent.; while the plurality of souls is derided by Clement as making the body a Trojan horse, with apparent reference to a similar criticism of Plato in the Theaetetiis. And again Plutarch ridicules the Stoics (i.e. apparently Chrysippus) for a "strange and outlandish" notion that all virtues and vices, arts and memories, impressions and passions and impulses and assents (he adds further down even "acts", such as "walking, dancing, supposing, addressing, reviling") are not merely "bodies" (of course in the familiar Stoic sense) but living creatures or animals, crowded apparently round the central point within the heart where "the ruling principle" is located : by this "swarm", he says, of hostile animals they turn each one of us into "a paddock or a stable, or a Trojan horse". Such a theory might seem to Basilides an easy deduction from his fatalistic doctrine of Providence, and of the consequent immutability of all natures.

The only specimen which we have of the practical ethics of Basilides is of a favourable kind, though grossly misunderstood and misapplied by Epiphanius. Reciting the views of different heretics on Marriage, Clement mentions first its approval by the Valentinians, and then gives specimens of the teaching of Basilides and his son Isidore, by way of rebuke to the immorality of the later Basilidians, before proceeding to the sects which favoured licence, and to those which treated marriage as unholy. He first reports the exposition of Matt. XIX. II f. (or a similar evangelic passage), in which there is nothing specially to note except the interpretation of the last class of eunuchs as those who remain in celibacy to avoid the distracting cares of providing a livelihood. He goes on to the paraphrase of I. Cor.VII. 9, interposing in the midst an illustrative sentence from Isidore, and transcribes the language used about the class above mentioned. "But suppose a young man either poor or (?) depressed, and in accordance with the word [in the Gospel] unwilling to marry, let him not separate from his brother; let him say 'I have entered into the holy place, nothing can befall me'; but if he have a suspicion let him say, 'Brother, lay thy hand on me, that I may sin not', and he shall receive help both to mind and to senses; let him only have the will to carry out completely what is good, and he shall succeed. But sometimes we say with the lips, 'We will not sin', while our thoughts are turned towards sinning : such an one abstains by reason of fear from doing what he wills, lest the punishment be reckoned to his account. But the estate of mankind has only certain things at once necessary and natural, clothing being necessary and natural, but natural, yet not necessary".

Although we have no evidence that Basilides, like some others, regarded our Lord's Baptism as the time when a Divine being first was joined to Jesus of Nazareth, it seems clear that he attached some unusual significance to the event. "They of Basilides" says Clement, "celebrate the day of His Baptism by a preliminary night-service of [Scripture] readings; and they say that the 'fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar' is (or means) the fifteenth day of the [Egyptian] month Tybi, while some [make the day] the eleventh of the same month". Again it is briefly stated in the Excerpta that the dove of the Baptism is said by the Basilidians to be the Minister. And the same association is implied in what Clement urges elsewhere: "If ignorance belongs to the class of good things, why is it brought to an end by amazement [i.e. the amazement of the Archon], and [so] the Minister that they speak of is superfluous, and the Proclamation, and the Baptism : if ignorance had not previously existed, the Minister would not have descended, nor would amazement have seized the Archon, as they themselves say."

This language, taken in conjunction with passages already cited from Hippolytus, implies that Basilides regarded the Baptism as the occasion when Jesus received "the Gospel" by a Divine illumination. The supposed descent of "Christ" for union with "Jesus", though constantly assumed by Hilgenfeld, is as destitute of ancient attestation as it is inconsistent with the tenor of Basilidian doctrine recorded by Clement, to say nothing of Hippolytus. It has been argued from Clement's language by Gieseler, that the Basilidians were the first to celebrate our Lord's Baptism. The early history of the Epiphany is too obscure to allow a definite conclusion on this point; but the statement about the Basilidian services of the preceding night receives some illustration from a passage of Epiphanius, lately published, in which we hear of the night before the Epiphany as spent in singing and flute-playing in a heathen temple at Alexandria: so that probably the Basilidian rite was a modification of an old local custom.

According to Agrippa Castor Basilides "in Pythagorean fashion" prescribed a silence of five years to his disciples.

The same author, we hear, stated that Basilides "named as prophets to himself Barcabbas and Barcoph, providing himself likewise with certain other [? prophets] who had no existence, and that he bestowed upon them barbarous appellations to strike amazement into those who have an awe of such things". The alleged prophecies apparently belonged to the apocryphal Zoroastrian literature popular with various Gnostics. From Hippolytus we hear nothing about these prophecies, which will meet us again presently with reference to Basilides's son Isidore, but he tells us that, according to Basilides and Isidore, Matthias spoke to them mystical doctrines which he heard in private teaching from the Saviour : and in like manner Clement speaks of the sect of Basilides as boasting that they took to themselves the glory of Matthias. Origen also and after him Eusebius refer to a "Gospel" of or according to Matthias. The true name was apparently the Traditions of Matthias : three interesting and by no means heretical extracts are given by Clement. In the last extract the responsibility laid on "the elect" for the sin of a neighbour recalls a passage already cited from Basilides.

It remains only to notice an apparent reference to Basilides, which has played a considerable part in modern expositions of his doctrine. Near the end of the anonymous Acts of the Disputation between Archelaus and Mani, written towards the close of the 3rd cent, or a little later, Archelaus disputes the originality of Mani's teaching, on the ground that it took rise a long time before with " acertain barbarian". "There was also, he says, a preacher among the Persians, a certain Basilides of great [or greater] antiquity, not long after the times of our Apostles, who being himself also a crafty man, and perceiving that at that time everything was preoccupied, decided to maintain that dualism which was likewise in favour with Scythianus," named shortly before as a contemporary of the Apostles, who had introduced dualism from a Pythagorean source. "Finally, as he had no assertion to make of his own, he adopted the sayings of others " (the last words are corrupt, but this must be nearly the sense). "And all his books contain things difficult and rugged."

The writer then cites the beginning of the thirteenth book of his treatises (tractatuum), in which it was said that "the saving word" (the Gospel) by means of the parable of the rich man and the poor man pointed out the source from which nature (or a nature) without a root and without a place germinated and extended itself over things. He breaks off a few words later and adds that after some 500 lines Basilides invites his reader to abandon idle and curious elaborateness (varietate), and to investigate rather the studies and opinions of barbarians on good and evil. Certain of them, Basilides states, said that there are two beginnings of all things, light and darkness; and he subjoins some particulars of doctrine of a Persian cast. Only one set of views, however, is mentioned, and the Acts end abruptly here in the two known MSS. of the Latin version in which alone this part of them is extant.

It is generally assumed that we have here unimpeachable evidence for the strict dualism of Basilides. It seems certain that the writer of the Acts held his Basilides responsible for the barbarian opinions quoted, which are clearly dualistic, and he had the whole book before him. Yet his language on this point is loose, as if he were not sure of his ground; and the quotation which he gives by no means bears him out : while it is quite conceivable that he may have had some acquaintance with duahstic Basilidians of a later day, such as certainly existed, and have thus given a wrong interpretation to genuine words of their master. It assuredly requires considerable straining to draw the brief interpretation given of the parable to a Manichean position, and there is nothing to show that the author of it himself adopted the first set of " barbarian" opinions which he reported.

Indeed the description of evil (for evil doubtless is intended) as a supervenient nature, without root and without place, reads almost as if it were directed against Persian doctrine, and may be fairly interpreted by Basilides's comparison of pain and fear to the rust of iron as natural accidents . The identity of the Basilides of the Acts with the Alexandrian has been denied by Gieseler with some show of reason. It is at least strange that our Basilides should be described simply as a "preacher among the Persians", a character in which he is otherwise unknown; and all the more since he has been previously mentioned with Marcion and Valentinus as a heretic of familiar name. On the other hand, it has been justly urged that the two passages are addressed to different persons. The correspondence is likewise remarkable between the "treatises" in at least thirteen books, with an interpretation of a parable among their contents, and the "twenty-four books on the Gospel" mentioned by Agrippa Castor, called Exegetica by Clement. Thus the evidence for the identity of the two writers may on the whole be treated as preponderating. But the ambiguity of interpretation remains; and it would be impossible to rank Basilides confidently among dualists, even if the passage in the Acts stood alone : much more to use it as a standard by which to force a dualistic interpretation upon other clearer statements of his doctrine.

Gnosticism was throughout eclectic, and Basilides superadded an eclecticism of his own. Antecedent Gnosticism, Greek philosophy, and the Christian faith and Scriptures all exercised a powerful and immediate influence over his mind. It is evident at a glance that his system is far removed from any known form of Syrian or original Gnosticism. Like that of Valentinus, it has been remoulded in a Greek spirit, but much more completely.

Historical records fail us almost entirely as to the personal relations of the great heresiarchs; yet internal evidence furnishes some indications which it can hardly be rash to trust. Ancient writers usually name Basilides before Valentinus; but there is little doubt that they were at least approximately contemporaries, and it is not unlikely that Valentinus was best known personally from his sojourn at Rome, which was probably the last of the recorded stages of his life. There is at all events no serious chronological difficulty in supposing that the Valentinian system was the starting point from which Basilides proceeded to construct by contrast his own theory, and this is the view which a comparison of doctrines suggests. In no point, unless it be the retention of the widely spread term archon, is Basilides nearer than Valentinus to the older Gnosticism, while several leading Gnostic forms or ideas which he discards or even repudiates are held fast by Valentinus. Such are descent from above, putting forth or pullulation, syzygies of male and female powers, and the deposition of faith to a lower level than knowledge. Further, the unique name given by Basilides to the Holy Spirit, "the Limitary Spirit", together with the place assigned to it, can hardly be anything else than a transformation of the strange Valentinian "Limit" (opos), which in like manner divides the Pleroma from the lower world; though, in conformity with the unifying purpose of Basilides, the Limitary Spirit is conceived as connecting as well as parting the two worlds. The same softening of oppositions which retain much of their force even with Valentinus shows itself in other instances, as of matter and spirit, creation and redemption, the Jewish age and the Christian age, the earthly and the heavenly elements in the Person of our Lord. The strongest impulse in this direction probably came from Christian ideas and the power of a true though disguised Christian faith. But Greek speculative Stoicism tended likewise to break down the inherited dualism, while at the same time its own inherent limitations brought faith into captivity. An antecedent matter was expressly repudiated, the words of Gen. iI. 3 eagerly appropriated, and a Divine counsel represented as foreordaining all future growths and processes; yet the chaotic nullity out of which the developed universe was to spring was attributed with equal boldness to its Maker : Creator and creation were not confused, but they melted away in the distance together. Nature was accepted not only as prescribing the conditions of the lower life, but as practically the supreme and permanent arbiter of destiny. Thus though faith regained its rights, it remained an energy of the understanding, confined to those who had the requisite inborn capacity; while the dealings of God with man were shut up within the lines of mechanical justice. The majestic and, so to speak, pathetic view bounded by the large Basilidian horizon was well fitted to inspire dreams of a high and comprehensive theology, but the very fidelity with which Basilides strove to cling to reality must have soon brought to light the incompetence of his teaching to solve any of the great problems. Its true office consisted in supplying one of the indispensable antecedents to the Alexandrian Catholicism which arose two generations later.

V. Refutations.—Notwithstanding the wide and lasting fame of Basilides as a typical heresiarch, no treatise is recorded as written specially in confutation of his teaching except that of Agrippa Castor. He had of course a place in the various works against all heresies; but, as we have seen, the doctrines described and criticized in several of them belong not to him but to a sect of almost wholly different character. Hippolytus, who in later years became acquainted with the Exegetica, contented himself with detecting imaginary plagiarisms from Aristotle. Even Origen, who likewise seems to have known the work, shows in the few casual remarks in his extant writings little real understanding even of Basilides's errors. On the other hand, Clement's candid intelligence enables him to detect the latent flaws of principle in the Basilidian theory without mocking at such of the superficial details as he has occasion to mention. Hilgenfeld, writing (1848) on the pseudo-Clementine literature, made a singular attempt to show that in one early recension of the materials of part of the Recognitions Simon was made to utter Basilidian doctrine, to be refuted by St. Peter, the traces of which had been partly effaced by his becoming the mouthpiece of other Gnostics in later recensions.

VI. Isodorus.—In the passage already noticed Hippolytus couples with Basilides "his true child and disciple" Isidore. He is there referring to the use which they made of the Traditions of Matthias; but in the next sentence he treats them as jointly responsible for the doctrines which he recites. Our only other authority respecting Isidore is Clement (copied by Theodoret), who calls him in like manner "at once son and disciple" of Basilides. In this place he gives three extracts from the first and second books of Isidore's Expositions of the Prophet Parchor. They are all parts of a plea, like so many put forward after the example of Josephus against Apion, that the higher thoughts of heathen philosophers and mythologers were derived from a Jewish source. The last reference given is to Pherecydes, who had probably a peculiar
interest for Isidore as the earliest promulgator of the doctrine of metempsychosis known to tradition. His allegation that Pherecydes followed "the prophecy of Ham" has been perversely urged as a sign that he set up the prophets of a hated race against the prophets of Israel. The truth is rather that the identification of Zoroaster with Ham or Ham's son, whatever may have been its origin, rendered it easy to claim for the apocryphal Zoroastrian books a quasi-biblical sanctity as proceeding from a son of Noah, and that Isidore gladly accepted the theory as evidence for his argument. "The prophets" from whom "some of the philosophers " appropriated a wisdom not their own can be no other than the Jewish prophets. Again Clement quotes his book On an Adherent Soul in correction of his preceding quotation from Basilides on the passions as "appendages". If the eight lines transcribed are a fair sample of the treatise, Isidore would certainly appear to have argued here against his father's teaching. He insists on the unity of the soul, and maintains that bad men will find "no common excuse" in the violence of the "appendages" for pleading that their evil acts were involuntary : "our duty is", he says, "by overcoming the inferior creation within us through the reasoning faculty, to show ourselves to have the mastery". A third passage from Isidore's Ethics is intercalated into his father's argument on I. Cor. VII. 9, to the same purport but in a coarser strain.

Basilides had to all appearance no eminent disciple except his own son. In this respect the contrast between him and Valentinus is remarkable. A succession of brilliant followers carried forward and developed the Valentinian doctrine. It is a singular testimony to the impression created at the outset by Basilides and his system that he remained for centuries one of the eponymi of heresy; his name is oftener repeated, for instance, in the writings of Origen, than that of any other dreaded of the ante-Nicene church except Marcion, Valentinus, and afterwards Mani. But the original teaching, for all its impressiveness, had no vitality. The Basilidianism which did survive, and that, as far as the evidence goes, only locally, was, as we have seen, a poor and corrupt remnant, adulterated with the very elements which the founder had strenuously rejected.

VII. The Spurious Basilidian System.—In briefly sketching this degenerate Basilidianism it will seldom be needful to distinguish the authorities, which are fundamentally two, Irenaeus and the lost early treatise of Hippolytus; both having much in common, and both being interwoven together in the report of Epiphanius. The other relics of the Hippolytean Compendium are the accounts of Philaster, and the supplement to Tertullian. At the head of this theology stood the Unbegotten, the Only Father. From Him was born or put forth Nus, and from Nus Logos, from Logos Phronesis, from Phronesis Sophia and Dynamis, from Sophia and Dynamis principalities, powers, and angels. This first set of angels first made the first heaven, and then gave birth to a second set of angels who made a second heaven, and so on till 365 heavens had been made by 365 generations of angels, each heaven being apparently ruled by an Archon to whom a name was given, and these names being used in magic arts. The angels of the lowest or visible heaven made the earth and man. They were the authors of the prophecies; and the Law in particular was given by their Archon, the God of the Jews. He being more petulant and wilful than the other angels, in his desire to secure empire for his people, provoked the rebellion of the other angels and their respective peoples. Then the Unbegotten and Innominable Father, seeing what discord prevailed among men and among angels, and how the Jews were perishing, sent His Firstborn Nus, Who is Christ, to deliver those Who believed on Him from the power of the makers of the world.

"He", the Basilidians said, "is our salvation, even He Who came and revealed to us alone this truth." He accordingly appeared on earth and performed mighty works; but His appearance was only in outward show, and He did not really take flesh. It was Simon of Cyrene that was crucified; for Jesus exchanged forms with him on the way, and then, standing unseen opposite in Simon's form, mocked those who did the deed. But He Himself ascended into heaven, passing through all the powers, till He was restored to the presence of His own Father. The two fullest accounts, those of Irenaeus and Epiphanius, add by way of appendix another particular of the antecedent mythology; a short notice on the same subject being likewise inserted parenthetically by Hippolytus. The supreme power and source of being above all principalities and powers and angels is Abraxas, the Greek letters of whose name added together as numerals make up 365, the number of the heavens; whence, they apparently said, the year has 365 days, and the human body 365 members. This supreme Power they called "the Cause" and "the First Archetype", while they treated as a last or weakest product (Hysterema, a Valentinian term, contrasted with Pleroma) this present world as the work of the last Archon. It is evident from these particulars that Abraxas was the name of the first of the 365 Archons, and accordingly stood below Sophia and Dynamis and their progenitors; but his position is not expressly stated, so that the writer of the supplement to Tertullian had some excuse for confusing him with "the Supreme God."

On these doctrines various precepts are said to have been founded. The most distinctive is the discouragement of martyrdom, which was made to rest on several grounds. To confess the Crucified was called a token of being still in bondage to the makers of the body (nay, he that denied the Crucified was pronounced to be free from the dominion of those angels, and to know the economy of the Unbegotten Father); but it was condemned especially as a vain and ignorant honour paid not to Christ, Who neither suffered nor was crucified, but to Simon of Cyrene; and further, a public confession before men was stigmatized as a giving of that which is holy to the dogs and a casting of pearls before swine. This last precept is but one expression of the secrecy which the Basilidians diligently cultivated, following naturally on the supposed possession of a hidden knowledge. They evaded our Lord's words, "Him that denieth Me before men," etc., by pleading, "We are the men, and all others are swine and dogs."

He who had learned their lore and known all angels and their powers was said to become invisible and incomprehensible to all angels and powers, even as also Caulacau was (the sentence in which Irenaeus, our sole authority here, first introduces Caulacau, a name not peculiar to the Basilidians, is unfortunately corrupt). And as the Son was unknown to all, so also, the tradition ran, must members of their community be known to none; but while they know all and pass through the midst of all, remain invisible and unknown to all, observing the maxim, "Do thou know all, but let no one know thee." Accordingly they must be ready to utter denials and unwilling to suffer for the Name, since [to outward appearance] they resembled all. It naturally followed that their mysteries were to be carefully guarded, and disclosed to "only one out of 1000 and two out of 10,000."

When Philaster (doubtless after Hippolytus) tells us in his first sentence about Basilides that he was " called by many a heresiarch, because he violated the laws of Christian truth by making an outward show and discourse (proponendo et loquendo) concerning the Law and the Prophets and the Apostles, but believing otherwise," the reference is probably to this contrast between the outward conformity of the sect and their secret doctrines and practices. The Basilidians considered themselves to be no longer Jews, but to have become more than Christians. Repudiation of martyrdom was naturally accompanied by indiscriminate use of things offered to idols. Nay, the principle of indifference is said to have been carried so far as to sanction promiscuous immorality. In this and other respects our accounts may possibly contain exaggerations; but Clement's already cited complaint of the flagrant degeneracy in his time from the high standard set up by Basilides himself is unsuspicious evidence, and a libertine code of ethics would find an easy justification in such maxims as are imputed to the Basilidians. It is hardly necessary to add that they expected the salvation of the soul alone, insisting on the natural corruptibility of the body. They indulged in magic and invocations, "and all other curious arts". A wrong reading taken from the inferior MSS. of Irenaeus has added the further statement that they used "images"; and this single spurious word is often cited in corroboration of the popular belief that the numerous ancient gems on which grotesque mythological combinations are accompanied by the mystic name ABRAXAS were of Basilidian origin.

Imperfect and distorted as the picture may be, such was doubtless in substance the creed of Basilidians not half a century after Basilides had written. Were the name absent from the records of his system and theirs, no one would have suspected any relationship between them, much less imagined that they belonged respectively to master and to disciples.

Outward mechanism and inward principles are alike full of contrasts; no attempts of critics to trace correspondences between the mythological personages, and to explain them by supposed condensations or mutilations, have attained even plausibility. Two misunderstandings have been specially misleading. Abraxas, the chief or Archon of the first set of angels, has been confounded with "the Unbegotten Father", and the God of the Jews, the Archon of the lowest heaven, has been assumed to be the only Archon recognized by the later Basilidians, though Epiphanius (69 b.c.) distinctly implies that each of the 365 heavens had its Archon. The mere name "Archon" is common to most forms of Gnosticism. So again, because Clement tells us that Righteousness and her daughter Peace abide in substantive being within the Ogdoad, "the Unbegotten Father"and the five grades or forms of creative mind which intervene between Him and the creator angels are added in to make up an Ogdoad, though none is recorded as acknowledged by the disciples : a combination so arbitrary and so incongruous needs no refutation. On the other hand, those five abstract names have an air of true Basilidian Hellenism, and the two systems possess at least one negative feature in common, the absence of syzygies and of all imagery connected directly with sex. On their ethical side the connection is discerned with less difficulty.

The contempt for martyrdom, which was perhaps the most notorious characteristic of the Basilidians, would find a ready excuse in their master's speculative paradox about martyrs, even if he did not discourage martyrdom himself. The silence of five years which he imposed on novices might easily degenerate into the perilous dissimulation of a secret sect, while their exclusiveness would be nourished by his doctrine of the Election; and the same doctrine might further after a while receive an antinomian interpretation. The nature of the contrast of principle in the theological part of the two creeds suggests how so great a change may have arisen.

The system of Basilides was a high-pitched philosophical speculation, entirely unfitted to exercise popular influence, and transporting its adherents to a region remote from the sympathies of men imbued with the old Gnostic phantasies, while it was too artificial a compound to attract heathens or Catholic Christians. The power of mind and character which the remains of his writings disclose might easily gather round him in the first instance a crowd who, though they could enter into portions only of his teaching, might remain detached from other Gnostics, and yet in their theology relapse into "the broad highway of vulgar Gnosticism", and make for themselves out of its elements, whether fortuitously or by the skill of some now forgotten leader, a new mythological combination. In this manner evolution from below might once more give place to emanation from above, Docetism might again sever heaven and earth, and a loose practical dualism (of the profounder speculative dualism of the East there is no trace) might supersede all that Basilides had taught as to the painful processes by which sonship attains its perfection. The composite character of the secondary Basilidianism may be seen at a glance in the combination of the five Greek abstractions preparatory to creation with the Semitic hosts of creative angels bearing barbaric names. Basilidianism seems to have stood alone in appropriating Abraxas; but Caulacau plays a part in more than one system, and the functions of the angels recur in various forms of Gnosticism, and especially in that derived from Saturnilus. Saturnilus likewise affords a parallel in the character assigned to the God of the Jew as an angel, and partly in the reason assigned for the Saviour's mission; while the Antitactae of Clement recall the resistance to the God of the Jews inculcated by the Basilidians. Other "Basilidian " features appear in the Pistis Sophia, viz. many barbaric names of angels (with 365 Archons), and elaborate collocations of heavens, and a numerical image taken from Deut. XXXII. 30. The Basilidian Simon of Cyrene is apparently unique.

VIII. History of the Basilidian Sect.—There is no evidence that the sect extended itself beyond Egypt; but there it survived for a long time. Epiphanius (about 375) mentions the Prosopite, Athribite, Saite, and "Alexandriopolite" (read Andropolite) nomes or cantons, and also Alexandria itself, as the places in which it still throve in his time, and which he accordingly inferred to have been visited by Basilides. All these places lie on the western side of the Delta, between Memphis and the sea. Nearer the end of cent. IV. Jerome often refers to Basilides in connection with the hybrid Priscillianism of Spain, and the mystic names in which its votaries delighted. According to Sulpicius Severus this heresy took its rise in "the East andEgypt"; but, he adds, it is not easy to say "what the beginnings were out of which it there grew". He states, however, that it was first brought to Spain by Marcus, a native of Memphis. This fact explains how the name of Basilides and some dregs of his disciples' doctrines or practices found their way to so distant a land as Spain, and at the same time illustrates the probable hybrid origin of the secondary Basilidianism itself.

 

Ebionism and Ebionites.

 

The name Ebionite first occurs in Irenaeus (c. 180-190). It was repeated, probably from him, by Hippolytus (c. 225-235) and Origen (d. A.D. 254), who first introduced an explanation of the name. Others offered different explanations; while other writers fabricated a leader, "Ebion," after whom the sect was called.

These explanations owe their origin to the tendency to carry back Ebionism, or the date of its founder, as far as possible. Thus the "Ebionite" was (according to his own statement) the "poor" man, he who voluntarily strove to practise the Master's precept in Apostolic times; and the correctness of the etymology is not shaken by the Patristic scorn which derived the name from "poverty of intellect," or from "low and mean opinions of Christ".

"Ebion," first personified by Tertullian, was said to have been a pupil of Cerinthus, and the Gospel of St. John to have been directed against them both. St. Paul and St. Luke were asserted to have spoken and written against Ebionites. The "Apostolical Constitutions" traced them back to Apostolic times; Theodoret assigned them to the reign of Domitian (A.D. 81-96). The existence of an "Ebion" is, however, now surrendered. Ebionism, like Gnosticism, had no special founder; but that its birthplace was the Holy Land, and its existence contemporary with the beginning of the Christian Church, is, with certain reservations, probably correct. A tendency to Ebionism existed from the first; gradually it assumed shape, and as gradually developed into the two special forms presently to be noticed.

The records of the church of Jerusalem contained in Acts prove how strong was the zeal for the Law of Moses among the Jewish converts to Christianity. After the fall of Jerusalem (A.D. 70), the church was formed at Pella under Symeon, and the Jewish Christians were brought face to face with two leading facts: firstly, that the temple being destroyed, and the observance of the Law and its ordinances possible only in part, there was valid reason for doubting the necessity of retaining the rest; secondly, that if they adopted this view, they must expect to find in the Jews their most uncompromising enemies. As Christians they had expected a judgment predicted by Christ, and, following His advice, had fled from the city. Both prediction and act were resented by the Jews, as is shewn not only by the contemptuous term (Minim) they applied to the Jewish Christians, but by the share they took in the death of the aged bp. Symeon (a.d. 106). The breach was further widened by the refusal of the Jewish Christians to take part in the national struggles—notably that of Bar-Cocheba (a.d. 132)—against the Romans, by the tortures they suffered for their refusal, and lastly, by the erection of Aelia Capitolina (a.d. 138) on the ruins of Jerusalem. The Jews were forbidden to enter it, while the Jewish and Gentile Christians who crowded there read in Hadrian's imperial decree the abolition of the most distinctively Jewish rites, and practically signified their assent by electing as their bishop a Gentile and uncircumcised man—Mark. Changes hitherto working gradually now rapidly developed. Jewish Christians, with predilections for Gentile Christianity and its comparative freedom, found the way made clear to them; others, attempting to be both Jews and Christians, ended in being neither, and exposed themselves to the contempt of Rabbin as well as Christian (Gratz, p. 433); others receded farther from Christianity, and approximated more and more closely to pure Judaism. The Ebionites are to be ranked among the last. By the time of Trajan (96-117) political events had given them a definite organization, and their position as a sect opposed to Gentile Christianity became fixed by the acts which culminated in the erection of Aelia Capitolina.

The Ebionites were known by other names, such as "Homuncionites" (Gk. "Anthropians" or "Anthropolatrians") from their Christological views, "Peratici" from their settlement at Peraea, and "Symmachians" from the one able literary man among them whose name has reached us. Acquaintance with Hebrew was then confined to a few, and his Greek version of O.T. was produced for the benefit of those who declined the LXX adopted by the orthodox Christians, or the Greek versions of Aquila and Theodotion accepted by the Jews. Many, if not most, of the improvements made by the Vulgate on the LXX are due to the Ebionite version.

Ebionism presents itself under two principal types, an earlier and a later, the former usually designated Ebionism proper or Pharisaic Ebionism, the latter, Essene or Gnostic Ebionism. The earlier type is to be traced in the writings of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, etc.; the latter in those of Epiphanius especially.

(a) Ebionism Proper.—The term expresses conveniently the opinions and practices of the descendants of the Judaizers of the Apostolic age, and is very little removed from Judaism. Judaism was to them not so much a preparation for Christianity as an institution eternally good in itself, and but slightly modified in Christianity. Whatever merit Christianity had, it possessed as the continuation and supplement of Judaism. The divinity of the Old Covenant was the only valid guarantee for the truth of the New. Hence such Ebionites tended to exalt the Old at the expense of the New, to magnify Moses and the Prophets, and to allow Jesus Christ to be "nothing more than a Solomon or a Jonas". Legal righteousness was to them the highest type of perfection; the earthly Jerusalem, in spite of its destruction, was an object of adoration "as if it were the house of God"; its restoration would take place in the millennial kingdom of Messiah, and the Jews would return there as the manifestly chosen people of God. The Ebionites divided the life of Jesus Christ into two parts—one preceding, the other following, His Baptism. In common with Cerinthus and Carpocrates, they represented Him to have been "the Son of Joseph and Mary according to the ordinary course of human generation". They denied His birth of a Virgin. He was "a mere man, nothing more than a descendant of David, and not also the Son of God". But at His Baptism a great change took place. The event is described in the "Gospel according to the Hebrews" current among them, and the description is an altered expansion of the record of St.  Matthew (III. 13, 14). The Voice from heaven spake not only the words recorded by the Evangelist, but also the words, "This day have I begotten thee". A great light suddenly filled the place John the Baptist asked, "Who art Thou, Lord?" and the Voice answered as before. John prostrated himself at the feet of Jesus, "I pray Thee, Lord, baptize me," but Jesus forbade him, saying, "Suffer it to be so," etc., etc. The day of Baptism was thus the day of His "anointing by election and then becoming Christ", it was the turning-point in the life of Jesus: from that moment He was endued with power necessary to fill His mission as Messiah; but He was still man. The Ebionites knew nothing of either pre-existence or divinity in connexion with Him. They are said to have freed themselves from the common Jewish notion that the Messiah was to be an earthly king; they were not shocked, as were so many of the Jews, at the humbleness of the birth, the sufferings, and crucifixion of Jesus; but they agreed with them in looking upon the advent of Messiah as future, and in deferring the restitution of all things to the millennium. The Ebionites proper insisted that the Law should be strictly observed not only by themselves but by all. They quoted the words of Jesus (Matt. v. 17), and pointed to His practice. It was the natural tendency of this view to diminish the value of faith in Christ and a corresponding life. Of far greater moment to them, and as necessary to salvation, was the due observance of circumcision, the sabbath, the distinction between clean and unclean food, the sacrificial offerings—probably with the later Pharisaic additions—and the refusal of fellowship or hospitality to the Gentiles. They even quoted the words of Jesus as their warrant, and affirmed their motto to be: "We also would be imitators of Christ". Jesus, they asserted, "was justified by fulfilling the Law. He was the Christ of God, since not one of the rest of mankind had observed the Law completely. Had any one else fulfilled the commandments of the Law, he would have been the Christ." Hence "when Ebionites thus fulfil the law, they are able to become Christs".

As might be expected, the Apostle Paul was especially hateful to them. They repudiated his official character, they reviled him personally. In language which recalls that of the Judaizers alluded to in Corinthians and Galatians, they represented him as a teacher directly opposed to SS. Peter, James, and John; they repudiated his Apostolical authority because (as they affirmed) he had not been "called of Jesus Christ Himself," nor trained in the Church of Jerusalem. They twisted into a defamatory application to himself his employment of the term "deceiver" ; he was himself one of the "many which corrupted the word of God"; he proclaimed "deliverance from the Law" only "to please men" and "commend himself" . His personal character was held up to reproach as that of one who "walked according to the flesh", puffed up with pride, marked by levity of purpose and even by dishonesty. They rejected his epistles, not on the ground of authenticity, but as the work of an "apostate from the Law ". They even asserted that by birth he was not a Jew, but a Gentile (wresting his words in Acts xxi. 39 who had become a proselyte in the hope of marrying the High Priest's daughter, but that having failed in this he had severed himself from the Jews and occupied himself in writing against circumcision and the observance of the sabbath.

In common with the Nazarenes and the Gnostic-Ebionites, the Pharisaic Ebionites used a recension of the Gospel of St. Matthew, which they termed the "gospel according to the Hebrews." It was a Chaldee version written in Hebrew letters, afterwards translated into Greek and Latin by Jerome, who declared it identical with the "gospel of the Twelve Apostles" and the "gospel of the Nazarenes". In the Ebionite "gospel" the section corresponding to the first two chapters of St. Matt. was omitted, the supernatural character of the narrative being contradictory to their views about the person of Jesus Christ. It is difficult to say with certainty what other books of the N.T. were known to them; but there is reason to believe that they (as also the Gnostic-Ebionites) were familiar with the Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke.

(b) Essene or Gnostic Ebionism.—This, as the name indicates, was a type of Ebionism affected by external influences. The characteristic features of the ascetic Essenes were reproduced in its practices, and the traces of influences more directly mystical and oriental were evident in its doctrines. The different phases through which Ebionism passed at different times render it, however, difficult to distinguish clearly in every case between Gnostic and Pharisaic Ebionism. Epiphanius is the chief authority on the Gnostic Ebionites. He met them in Cyprus, and personally obtained information about them. (Their principal tenets were as follows: Christianity they identified with primitive religion or genuine Mosaism, as distinguished from what they termed accretions to Mosaism, or the post-Mosaic developments described in the later books of O.T. To carry out this distinction they fabricated two classes of "prophets". In the former class they placed Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Aaron, Moses, and Jesus; in the latter David, Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc. In the same spirit they accepted the Pentateuch alone among the O.T. writings, and emasculated it; rejecting whatever reflected questionably upon their favourites. They held that there were two antagonistic powers appointed by God—Christ and devil; to the former was allotted the world to come, to the latter the present world. The conception of Christ was variously entertained. Some affirmed that He was created (not born) of the Father, a Spirit, and higher than the angels; that He had the power of coming to this earth when He would, and in various modes of manifestation; that He had been incarnate in Adam, and had appeared to the patriarchs in bodily shape; others identified Adam and Christ. In these last days He had come in the person of Jesus. Jesus was therefore to them a successor of Moses, and not of higher authority. They quoted from their gospel a saying attributed to Him, "I am He concerning Whom Moses prophesied, saying, A prophet shall the Lord God raise unto you like unto me," etc., and this was enough to identify His teaching with that of genuine Mosaism. But by declining to fix the precise moment of the union of the Christ with the man Jesus—a union assigned by Pharisaic Ebionites to the hour of Baptism—they admitted His miraculous origin.

In pursuance of their conception that the devil was the "prince of this world" they were strict ascetics. They abjured flesh-meat, repudiating passages which contradicted their view; they refused to taste wine, and communicated with unleavened bread and water. Water was to them "in the place of a god"; ablutions and lustrations were imperative and frequent. But they held the married life in honour, and recommended early marriages. To the observance of the Jewish sabbath they added that of the Christian Lord's day. Circumcision was sacred to them from the practice of the patriarchs and of Jesus Christ; and they declined all fellowship with the uncircumcised, but repudiated the sacrifices of the altar and the reverence of the Jew for the Temple. In common with the Ebionites proper, they detested St. Paul, rejected his epistles, and circulated stories discreditable to him. The other Apostles were known to them by their writings, which they regarded as inferior to their own gospel.

The conjecture appears not improbable that as the siege of Jerusalem under Titus gave an impetus to Ebionism proper, so the ruin under Hadrian developed Gnostic Ebionism. Not that Gnosticism began then to affect it for the first time, but that Gnostic ideas hitherto held in solution were precipitated and found a congenial home among men who through contact with oriental systems in Syria were already predisposed to accept them. This is further evident from the book of Elchasai and the Clementine literature. These works are the production of the Essene Ebionites; and where they speak of Jesus Christ and His Apostles, His sayings and their lives, they do so, not in the words of the canonical Gospels and Epistles, but with additions or omissions, and a colouring which transforms (e.g.) St. Peter, St. Matthew, and St. James the Just into Essenes, and yet with that Gnostic tendency of thought which makes them lineal descendants of the Judaizers who imperilled the church at Colossae.

The Essene or Gnostic-Ebionites differed from the Pharisaic Ebionites in another respect. By missionary zeal, as well as by literary activity, they sought to obtain converts to their views. In the earlier part of the 3rd cent. the Ebionite Alcibiades of Apamea (Syria) repaired to Rome. He brought with him the book of Elchasai, and "preached unto men a new remission of sins (proclaimed) in the third year of Trajan's reign" (A.D. 101). Hippolytus, who gives an account of the matter , exposed the decided antinomianism which penetrated the teaching of the mythical teacher and of the pupil, but it is evident that many "became victims of the delusion." The immorality which the book—in imitation of the teaching of Callistus—indirectly encouraged probably attracted some, but would discredit the dogmatic views of the missionary.

Ebionite Christianity did not, however, last very long, neither did it exercise much influence west of Syria while it lasted. In Palestine the discomfiture accorded to "a certain one" (probably Alcibiades) who came to Caesarea c. A.D. 247 maintaining the "ungodly and wicked error of the Elkesaites" was in keeping with the reception accorded to less extreme Ebionite views from the time of the reconstitution of the mother-church at Aelia Capitolina. Judaism of every kind gradually passed out of favour. The attitude of the bishops of Palestine in the Paschal controversy of the 2nd cent. was that of men who wished to stand clear of any sympathy with Jewish customs; the language of Justin Martyr and of Hegesippus was the language of the representatives of the Samaritan and the Hebrew Christianity of the day, not of the Ebionite. Outside of Palestine Ebionism had even less chance of survival. From the very first, the instructions and memories of St. Paul and St. John excluded it from Asia Minor; in Antioch the names of Ignatius, Theophilus, and Serapion were vouchers for Catholic doctrine and practice; and the daughter-churches of Gaul and Alexandria naturally preferred doctrine supplied to them by teachers trained in the school of these Apostles. Even in the church of Rome, whatever tendency existed in Apostolic times towards Ebionism, the separation—also in Apostolic times—of the Judaizers was the beginning of the end which no after-amalgamation under Clement could retard. The tone of the Shepherd of Hermas—a work which emanated from the Roman church during the first half of the 2nd cent. (see Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 99, n. 3)—however different from the tone of Clement and St. Paul, is not Ebionite, as a comparison with another so-called Roman and certainly later Ebionite work—the Clementine writings—shews. The end of Ebionism had actually come in the Roman church when in the 2nd cent. Jewish practices—notably as regards the observance of

Easter—were unhesitatingly rejected. The creed of the Christian in Rome was the creed which he held from Irenaeus in Gaul and Polycarp in Asia Minor, and not from the Ebionite. When the above-named Alcibiades appeared in Rome (A.D. 219), Hippolytus denounced his teaching (that of Elchasai) as that of "a wolf risen up against many wandering sheep, whom Callistus had scattered abroad": it came upon him as a novelty; it had "risen up," he says, "in our own day" (Haer. ix. cc. 8, 12). This language is a proof of the oblivion which had certainly befallen any previous propagation of Ebionism in Rome.

For 200 years more Ebionism—especially of the Essene form—lingered on. A few Ebionites were left in the time of Theodoret, about the middle of 5th cent.; the rest had returned to strict Judaism and the utter rejection of Christianity, or to a purer Christianity than that which Ebionism favoured.

 

 

 

LEUCIUS

 

Leucius, the reputed author of large apocryphal additions to the N.T. history, which originated in heretical circles, and which, though now lost, were much current in early times. The fullest account is that given by Photius, who describes a book, called The Circuits of the Apostles, which contained the Acts of Peter, John, Andrew, Thomas, and Paul, and purported to have been written by Leucius Charinus. This second name Charinus is peculiar to Photius, earlier writers calling the author simply Leucius, a name variously altered by transcribers. Photius characterizes the book as in style utterly unlike the genuine N.T. writings, and full of folly, self-contradiction, falsehood, and impiety. It taught the existence of two gods—an evil one, the God of the Jews, having Simon Magus as his minister, and a good one, from Whom Christ came. It confounded the Father and the Son; denied the reality of Christ's Incarnation, and gave a Docetic account of His life on earth and especially of His crucifixion. It condemned marriage and regarded all generation as the work of the evil principle; denied that demons were created by God; related childish stories of miraculous restoration to life, of both men and cattle; and in the Acts of John used language which the Iconoclasts regarded as favouring them. From this description we can identify as the same work a collection of Apostolic Acts, from which extracts were read at the 2nd council of Nicaea, the story of Lycomedes being that made use of by the Iconoclasts, and the Docetic tales being from this work. In the council was next read a citation from Amphilochius of Iconium, denouncing certain heretical Acts of the Apostles, and in particular arguing against the truth of a story, evidently that to which we have just referred, because it represented St. John as on the Mount of Olives during the crucifixion, and so contradicted the gospel, which relates that he was close to the Cross. With this evidence that the work read by Photius was in existence before the end of the 4th cent., we may probably refer to the same source a statement of Epiphanius that Leucius was a disciple of John and joined his master in opposing the Ebionites. Church writers frequently reject the doctrine of heretical apocrypha and yet accept stories told in such documents as true, provided there were no doctrinal reason for rejecting them. The Docetic Leucius, who denied the true manhood of our Lord, was at the opposite pole from the Ebionites, who asserted Him to be mere man, and therefore the Acts of John might well have contained a confutation of Ebionism.

The Acts of Leucius were in use among the Manichees in the time of St. Augustine. Faustus the Manichean appeals to Acts of the four apostles mentioned by Photius (Peter, Andrew, Thomas, and John), charging the Catholic party with wrongly excluding them from their canon. In several places Augustine refers to the same Acts, and he names as the author Leutius, the name being written in some MSS. Levitius or Leuticius. In the passage last cited, the writer, supposed to be Evodius of Uzala, a contemporary of Augustine, quotes from the Acts of Andrew a story of Maximilla, the wife of the proconsul Egeas under whom St. Andrew suffered, who, to avoid having intercourse with her husband, without his knowledge substituted her maid in her own place; and on another occasion, when she and her companion were engaged hearing the apostle, an angel, by imitating their voices, deceived the husband into the belief that they were still in her bedchamber. This story, which agrees with what Photius tells of the author's condemnation of sexual intercourse, is much softened in the still extant Acts of Pseudo-Abdias, which are an orthodox recasting of a heretical original. We find still the names of Maximilla and Egeas; but Maximilla does not refuse intercourse with her husband, and only excites his displeasure because, on account of her eagerness to hear the apostle, she can be with him less frequently; and, without any angelic deception, providential means are devised to prevent Egeas from surprising his wife at the Christian meeting. These Augustinian notices enable us to infer that it was the same work Philaster had in view when he stated that the Manichees had Acts purporting to be written by disciples of St. Andrew, and describing apostle's doings when he passed from Pontus into Greece. He adds that these heretics had also Acts of Peter, John, and Paul, containing stories of miracles in which beasts were made to speak; for that these heretics counted the souls of men and of beasts alike. In the Gelasian decree on apocryphal books we read: "Libri omnes, quos fecit Leucius discipulus diaboli, apocryphi," where we have various readings, Lucianus and Seleucius.

In the spurious correspondence between Jerome and Chromatius and Heliodorus, Jerome is represented as giving an orthodox version of certain authentic additions to St. Matthew's narrative, of which a heretical version had been given by Leucius (or, as it is printed, Seleucus), the author of the Acts already mentioned. In the letter of Innocent to Exsuperius he condemns documents bearing the name of Matthew, of James the Less, of Peter and Paul written by Leucius, of Andrew written by Xenocharis and Leonidas the philosophers, and of Thomas. It has been conjectured that in Xenocharis an adjective has been joined with a proper name, and that we have here a corruption of Charinus. In the Latin version of the apocryphal Descensus Christi ad inferos, two sons of the aged Simeon, named Leucius and Charinus, are represented as having died before our Lord, and as miraculously returning to bear witness to His triumphs in the under world. The writer clearly borrowed these names from the apocryphal Acts; did he there find warrant for regarding them as the names of distinct persons, or was Photius right in reporting both names to have been given to the same person? It would seem that only the Acts of John and perhaps of Peter named Leucius as their author: the necessities of the fiction would require the Acts of Andrew to be attested by a different witness, possibly Charinus, and it is conceivable that Photius may have combined the names merely from his judging, no doubt rightly, that all the Acts had a common author.

Concerning the Acts of Paul in use among the Manicheans see LINUS and THECLA. Besides the authorities already cited, the Acts of Leucius are mentioned by Turribius, a Spanish bp. of the first half of the 5th cent., from whom we learn that they were used by the Priscillianists, and that the Acts of Thomas related a baptism, not in water but in oil, according to the Manichean fashion; and by Pseudo-Mellitus, who acknowledges the truth of apostolic miracles related by Leucius, but argues against his doctrine of two principles. Pacian says, "Phryges nobiliores qui se animatos a Leucio mentiuntur, se institutos a Proculo gloriantur." On this passage Zahn mainly relies for dating the Acts of Leucius earlier than 160. But no other writer mentions a Montanist use of these Acts, and on this subject the authority of Pacian does not count for much. The context does not indicate that he had much personal knowledge of the sect, and his heretical notices appear to be derived from the Syntagma of Hippolytus, where we have no reason to think that he would have found any mention of Leucius. It is highly probable that Pacian, as well as others of his contemporaries, believed that Leucius was a real companion of St. John, and therefore no doubt earlier than Montanus; but that he had any means of real knowledge as to this we have no reason to believe. Besides those authorities which mention Leucius by name, others speak of apocryphal Acts, and probably refer to the same literature. Thus the Synopsis Scripturae ascribed to Athanasius speaks of books called the Travels of Peter, of John, and of Thomas; and by the second the Leucian story is probably intended. Eusebius tells of Acts of Andrew and of John; Epiphanius states that the Encratites used Acts of Andrew, John, and Thomas; that the Apostolici relied on Acts of Andrew and Thomas; and that those whom he calls Origeniani used Acts of Andrew. It is worth remarking that it is of the three apostles, Thomas, Andrew, and John, whose travels were written by Leucius, that Origen can tell where the lot of their preaching had fallen, viz. India, Scythia, and Asia respectively.

The testimonies we have cited are not earlier than the 4th cent., and several of them speak of Leucius as a Manichean; but Grabe, Cave, Mill, Beausobre, Lardner, and others consider that he lived in the 2nd cent.; and, as he therefore could not have been a Manichean, was probably a Marcionite. Some have identified him with the Marcionite LUCANUS. But no Marcionite would have chosen for the heroes of his narrative the Jewish apostles, John, Thomas, and Andrew.

Beausobre gives six arguments for the early date of Leucius, not one of which is conclusive, all being vitiated by the tacit assumption that Leucius was a real person, and not, as we hold, merely the fictitious name of an imaginary disciple of St. John, whom the forger chose to make the narrator of the story.

Zahn published some new fragments of Leucius, which increase our power of recognizing as Leucian things which different fathers have told without naming their authority. The Leucian character of these fragments is verified by various coincidences with the old. Names recur, e.g. Lycomedes. There is a story of a miracle performed on one Drusiana, who had submitted to die rather than have intercourse with her husband. This agrees with that of Maximilla and Egeas in revealing the violently Encratite principles of the author; cf. that told in the Acts of Thomas. Zahn has argued the case for the early date of Leucius in a much more scientific way than previous supporters of the same thesis. He tries to show that there are statements in earlier writers really derived from Leucius, though his name is not given. All Zahn's arguments do not seem to us conclusive, yet enough remains valid to lead us to regard the Leucian Acts as of the same age as the travels of Peter (which are the basis of the Clementines) and the Acts of Paul and Thecla. When a writer, who in one place quotes Leucius, elsewhere makes statements we know to be Leucian, they doubtless come from Leucius though he does not there name his authority; e.g.

Epiphanius names Leucius only once, but we may safely count as derived from Leucius his reference to the manner of John's death and to John's virginity. Further, in the immediate context of the passage where Epiphanius names Leucius, he names other heretics of the apostolic age, and the presumption that he found these names in Leucius becomes almost a certainty when in one of the new Leucian fragments one of them, Cleobius, is found as that of a person in John's company. Other names in the same context are Claudius, Merinthus, and the Pauline Demas and Hermogenes; concerning whom see the Acts of Thecla and the so-called Dorotheus. The Augustinian and Hieronymian notices may be treated similarly. We can identify as Leucian several statements which are described as found "in ecclesiastica historia" or "in patrum traditionibus," and hence probably others reported with the same formulae are from the same source.

We next enumerate some of the statements which may be characterized as Leucian, naming some of the early writers who have repeated them.

(1) A Leucian fragment tells how John's virginity had been preserved by a threefold interposition of our Lord, breaking off the Apostle's designs each time that he attempted to marry. There is a clear reference to this story in a sermon ascribed to Augustine, and from this source probably so many of the Fathers have derived their opinion of John's virginity, concerning which the canonical Scriptures say nothing.

The Leucian Acts, in conformity with their strong Encratism, seem to have dwelt much on the apostle's virginity, describing this as the cause of our Lord's love to him, and as the reason for his many privileges, particularly the care of the virgin mother. In Pistis Sophia the name of the apostle John has usually the title ó παρθéνος appended, and we may therefore set down Pistis Sophia as post-Leucian, but uncertainty as to its date prevents us from drawing any further inference. The earliest mention of John's virginity is found in the epithet "spado" given to St. John by Tertullian, whence Zahn infers that Tertullian must have used the Acts of Leucius. We think Zahn does not sufficiently allow for the probability in the case of one who is said to have lived so long, that a true tradition that he never married might have been preserved in the churches of Asia. Zahn contends that because Jerome uses the word "eunuchus" not "spado," he is not copying Tertullian, but that both writers use a common source, viz. Leucius. But when the passage in Tertullian is read with the rest of the treatise, it appears more likely that the epithet is Tertullian's own.

(2) Other evidence of Tertullian's acquaintance with Leucius is found in his story of St. John's having been cast into burning oil. Speaking of Rome he says, "Ubi apostolus Johannes, posteaquam in oleum igneum demersus nihil passus est, in insulam relegatur." What was Tertullian's authority? Now, though none of the extant fragments of Leucius relate to this, yet that these Acts contained the story is probable from the following evidence. Jerome commenting on Matt. xx. 23 states on the authority of "ecclesiasticae historiae" that the apostle had been "missus in ferventis olei dolium, et inde ad suscipiendam coronam Christi athleta processerit, statimque relegatus in Pathmos insulam." Now Abdias, whose work is notoriously based on Leucius, has "proconsul jussit eum velut rebellem in dolio ferventis olei mergi, qui statim ut conjectus in aeneo est, veluti athleta, unctus non adustus de vase exiit." The second passage will be seen to be the original, Jerome's use of athleta receiving its explanation from Abdias. This conclusion is strengthened by another passage in Jerome, where, though he names Tertullian as his authority, he gives particulars not found in him, viz. the "dolium ferventis olei," and that the apostle came out fresher and more vigorous than he had entered. We feel forced to believe that Jerome, who certainly used Leucius, found in it the statement about the boiling oil; and then there is a strong case for suspecting that this was also the authority of Tertullian.

But though Tertullian names Rome as the scene of the miracle, it may be doubted whether this was so in the Greek Leucius. The mention by Abdias of a "proconsul" suggests Asia. Hippolytus, however, agrees with Tertullian in placing John at Rome. Some of the earliest Fathers who try to reconcile Matt. xx. 23 with the fact that John did not suffer martyrdom, do not mention this story of the baptism in oil. A later story makes John miraculously "drink a cup" of poison with impunity.

(3) An acquaintance with Leucius by Clement of Alexandria has been inferred from the agreement of both in giving on John's authority a Docetic account of our Lord. The "traditions of Matthias" may have been Clement's authority; but that John is appealed to no doubt gives probability to the conjecture that Clement's source is the Acts which treat of St. John, a probability increased on an examination of the story told by Clement as to John's composition of Fourth Gospel at the request of his friends. In the Muratorian Fragment the request is urged by the apostle's fellow-bishops in Asia; he asks them to fast three days, begging for a revelation of God's will, and then it is revealed to Andrew that John is to write. The stories of Clement and the Muratorian writer are too like to be independent; yet it is not conceivable that one copied from the other; therefore they doubtless used a common authority, who was not Papias, else Eusebius, when he quotes the passage from Clement, would scarcely have failed to mention it. Now, several later writers tell the same story, agreeing, however, in additional particulars, which show that they did not derive their knowledge from either the Muratorian writer or Clement. Thus they tell that the cause of the request that John should write was the spread of Ebionite heresy, which required that something should be added concerning the divinity of our Lord to what St. John's predecessors had told about His humanity; and that, in answer to their prayers, the apostle, filled with the Holy Ghost, burst into the prologue, "In the beginning was the Word." Other verbal coincidences make it probable that this story was found in the Acts of Leucius, which Epiphanius tells us contained an account of John's resistance to the Ebionite heresy; and if so, Leucius is likely to have been Clement's authority also.

Combining the probabilities under the three heads enumerated, there seems reasonable ground for thinking that the Leucian Acts were 2nd cent., and known to Clement and Tertullian. Irenaeus, however, shows no sign of acquaintance with them, and Clement must have had some other source of Johannine traditions, his story of John and the robber being, as Zahn owns, not derived from Leucius; for no later writer who tells the story shews any sign of having had any source of information but Clement.

We cannot follow Zahn in combining the two statements of Theodoret that the Quartodecimans appealed to St. John's authority, and that they used apocryphal Acts, and thence inferring that Leucius represented St. John as sanctioning the Quartodeciman practice. If so, we think other traces of this Leucian statement would have remained. Theodoret would have found in Eusebius that the churches of Asia appealed to St. John as sanctioning their practice, and that may have been a true tradition.

A brief notice will suffice of other probable contents of the work of Leucius. He appears to have mentioned the exile to Patmos, and as resulting from a decree of the Roman emperor; but that the emperor was not named is likely from the variations of subsequent writers. Zahn refers to Leucius the story of St. John and the partridge, told by Cassianus, who elsewhere shews acquaintance with Leucius. A different story of a partridge is told in a non-Leucian fragment. The Leucian Acts very possibly contained an account of the Virgin's death. But the most important of the remaining Leucian stories is that concerning St. John's painless death. Leucius appears to have given what purported to be the apostle's sermon and Eucharistic prayer on the last Sunday of his life. Then after breaking of bread—there is no mention of wine—the apostle commands Byrrhus (the name occurs in the Ignatian epistles as that of an Ephesine deacon) to follow him with two companions, bringing spades with them. In a friend's burying-place they dig a grave, in which the apostle laid himself down, and with joyful prayer blessed his disciples and resigned his soul to God. Later versions give other miraculous details; in particular that which Augustine mentions, that St. John lay in the grave not dead but sleeping, the dust heaped over him showing his breathing by its motions.

Besides the Acts Leucius has been credited with a quantity of other apocryphal literature. If, as we believe, he is only a fictitious personage, it is likely enough that the author of the romance wrote other like fictions, though our information is too scanty for us to identify his work. But there is no trustworthy evidence that he affixed the name of Leucius to any composition besides the Acts of Peter and John. From the nature of the case an apostle's martyrdom must be related by one of the apostles' disciples, but such a one would not be regarded as a competent witness to the deeds of our Lord Himself, and accordingly apocryphal gospels are commonly ascribed to an apostle, and not to one of the second generation of Christians. The only apparent evidence for a connexion of the name of Leucius with apocryphal gospels is the mention of the name in the spurious letter of Jerome to Chromatius and Heliodorus, a witness unworthy of credit even if his testimony were more distinct. Probably the orthodox, finding in the Acts which bore the name of Leucius plain evidence that the writer was heretical in his doctrine of two principles, still accepted him as a real personage of the sub-apostolic age, and when they met with other apocryphal stories, the doctrine of which they had to reject as heretical while willing to accept the facts related as mainly true, Leucius seemed a probable person to whom to ascribe the authorship.