CRISTO RAUL. READING HALL THE DOORS OF WISDOM

THE HISTORY OF THE POPES

THE HISTORY OF DOCTRINE.

GNOSTICISM.

(a) The General Characteristics of Gnosticism.

The history of primitive Christianity is the history of a desperate struggle between the old world and the new faith just cradled in Judaea. This warfare was not confined to any one sphere; it was universal. Persecution was the first and inevitable manifestation of this deadly hostility. Not only was the new religion opposed to all the constituent principles of Pagan society, and repugnant to the prejudices of degenerate Judaism, but it was essentially an aggressive and victorious power. It was not content to be an alien in the midst of the brilliant and corrupt civilisation into which it was born, and to pass upon it only the silent condemnation of its own pure presence; it lifted up its voice in protest against its vileness and deceptive lustre. It did not merely refuse to offer incense to the idol; it unmasked the false god and denounced the abominations of the idol-worship.

The humblest of its representatives was a witness for Christ—His soldier, His missionary. In all places and in all seasons Christianity carried on a mission, ever active and aggressive. Between it and the ancient world the opposition was radical and absolute. Doubtless, on the part of the Christians, all was gentleness and resignation, but this very gentleness under the fire of persecution, had the effect of an irritating provocation in a society, the only recognised basis of which was violence. Martyrdom, blending sublime resignation with unconquerable fidelity, was the holy challenge of the soul to brute force, and the fiercest resistance would have been better tolerated than this triumphant weakness, which revealed the indomitable energy of conscience. This terrible conflict, which lasted for three centuries, we .have traced through its various phases, till the day when the sword fell from the hand of the persecutors. But the struggle was not confined to arenas and torture-prisons; it was carried on also in the domain of thought. Paganism assailed Christian doctrine by all the voices at its command—by popular clamour, by public calumny, by the sarcasms of fine satirists like Lucian, by the formal philosophy of a Celsus and a Porphyry. Nay, it even devised new systems, by which it sought to vanquish the Gospel with its own weapons, borrowing from it the methods for the assault. We have endeavoured to reproduce the learned and eloquent replies to these various assailants, which were presented by the Christian apology of the first ages, as it found exponents at Carthage, at Alexandria, and at Rome.

We have now to deal with more dangerous and treacherous attacks, those, namely, of heresy, which added, as it were, the perils of intestine and civil war to these formidable assaults from without. In reality, the enemy is always the same, but more subtle and disguised; the adversary is still the ancient world, but now the attempt is to stifle the new religion by embracing it. If Christianity could not release itself from this deadly clasp, it was, indeed, doomed, for it would have lost that which constituted its essence and vital principle. I know that some question our right thus to characterise the tendencies which were so keenly combated by the early Fathers. The very name of heresy is regarded as an attack levelled at liberty of conscience and of thought. We cannot share these scruples, the logical issue of which must be to deprive Christianity of all distinctive character.

Doubtless, in subsequent times, when the Church—transformed into a hierarchy, and incorporated with the Empire—committed to the civil power the guardianship of her creed, the designation heresy acquired a new import; it was the dictum of an arbitrary, often tyrannical authority, and too often carried in its train forcible and material repression. But this was not the case in the period preceding the great Councils, when no civil penalties were attached to spiritual errors. The Church was then a free association; and it was open to any, without detriment, to separate from it. The argument against error was enforced only by moral and intellectual suasion. One uniform type of doctrine had not yet been produced; secondary differences found free expression in the East and West; theology was not fettered by invariable formulas. If, in the midst of this diversity, we still discover a common basis of faith, we must surely regard this, not as a system composed and formulated by the authority of a school, but as the faith itself, in its truest instinct and most spontaneous manifestation. If this same unanimity, which is apparent in the essentials of the faith, is also displayed in the repudiation of certain other influences, may we not fairly conclude that those influences were in flagrant controversion of the fundamental principles of Christianity? This presumption becomes a certainty if we recognise, in the doctrine thus universally rejected by the Church, the characteristic features of one of the religions of the past. It is impossible to maintain that Gnosticism and Ebionitism are legitimate forms of Christian thought, unless we are prepared to admit that Christian thought has no individuality, no specific character by which it may be recognised. Otherwise, under pretext of giving it greater breadth, it is reduced to a nullity. No one, in the time of Plato, would have dared to attach his name to any doctrine which would have been incompatible with the theory of ideas, and anyone would have excited the just ridicule of Greece, who should have spoken of Epicurus or of Zeno as a disciple of the Academy. Let us admit then, that if there exists a religion or doctrine known as Christianity, the existence of heresies in connection with it is a necessary possibility.

The word heresy has properly a very noble meaning, since it signifies free choice applied to a doctrine.

From the first the new religion was called a heresy by the Jews who were accustomed to designate by this name various parties or divers sects. To the orthodoxy of the synagogue indeed, Christianity could not but seem worthy of excommunication, since it assailed its very vital principle. The Apostles applied the same designation to the tendencies which, whether from the Jewish point of view or from that of Pagan speculation, impinged upon and imperilled the true faith in Jesus Christ. The Fathers used the word heresy in the same manner. We, like them, must understand it to apply to doctrines which, upon some capital point, are in direct contradiction to primitive Christianity. In the second and third centuries, heresy is always a reaction, either in the direction of Judaism or Paganism. Thus it carries on, in an inner and more vital sphere, the same conflict which was waged between the Gospel and the ancient world, in the realms of fact and of thought. The Pagan reaction was by far the most important. The heresy which sprang from Judaism was a timid and insignificant thing, or, at least, was far outweighed and outrun by the heresy which was born of Paganism. The latter therefore will claim our first attention.! We have already indicated its obscure beginnings in the portion of this book devoted to the Apostolic age. In the second century, it emerges from the formative period as a great school, and sets up its own altar in opposition to that of primitive Christianity. The time is come for us to characterise this important spiritual movement, so rife with perils to the Church.

However numerous the schools into which Gnosticism is divided, it has one dominant trait, which is never effaced, and which is sufficiently indicated by its very name. The term knowledge occurs in the writings of the Apostles, but it there designates simply the more profound apprehension of Christian truth. In the Epistle of Barnabas it acquires a sense more nearly allied to the new meaning, which became attached to it in the second century, for it there represents an allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament, superseding the literal import. It is but a step beyond this to the daring speculation which arbitrarily tampers with the texts. The tendency of Gnosticism is always to make the element of knowledge predominate over that of the moral life; it changes religion into theosophy. If it had confined itself to seeking the satisfaction of the intellectual faculties by the searching study of revelation, the attempt would have been perfectly justifiable. Christianity is not a religion that stultifies the mental faculties; on the contrary, it gives a powerful impetus to thought, and enlarges its domain by opening to it the realm of the infinite, the invisible, the divine; and if the mind is indeed overwhelmed by truths which are as high above its grasp as the heavens are above the earth, it sinks only under the weight of unsearchable riches. Faith leads to knowledge, for it is not possible that the whole nature of the man—head, heart, and conscience— should not strive to apprehend the divine object of his faith. There is a genuine Christian knowledge, which has taken an important part in the development of the Church; theology is the very knowledge which, according to Apostolic precept, is to be added to faith. But, in order to preserve its true character, it must never be allowed to become pure speculation, or to fall into the esoterism which makes its doctrines a mystery to all but the select initiate. Christianity is a divine manifestation, a free and sovereign intervention of God in history ; it is a fact before it is an idea; its history is the basis of its system. It is a positive rather than a theoretical religion,—a glorious remedy for a desperate evil, a grand restoration. On the awful reality of the Fall, it rears the sublime reality of Redemption. Hence its eminently moral character; it moves in the living sphere of free and personal influences, over which logic has no rigid or restrictive power. It starts with the statement of great facts, which are not the product of a syllogism, since liberty, whether in God or man, eludes the restraints of reasoning, and by its very essence reveals itself as a spontaneous force. This moral and historical character of Christianity is just that which brings it within the reach of all men, whatever their diversities of intellectual culture, since it makes its appeal primarily to the heart and conscience—to that which is fundamental and universal in the soul. This is the key to that grand and triumphant exclamation of Jesus : "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes." A religion which should be for the wise and thoughtful only, would be but an abstract speculation, fit to delight the finer spirits capable of rising to those rarefied heights; it would be no divine manifestation, coming within the grasp, or commending itself to the direct intuition of the human heart, whether that heart beat in hut or palace, under the peasant's smock or the philosopher's mantle. Jesus Christ might well glory in the divine popularity of His teaching, for this was a fact entirely new. Until He came, every system which had been raised above the gross superstitions of Paganism, had been only an abstract and obscure philosophy, reserved for a little company of disciples.

It was this eclecticism which the teaching of the Gnostics sought to revive in the Church. Knowledge was with them everything; Christianity, therefore, was a matter of knowledge, a science reserved to the initiate. This was a complete inversion of the Gospel method, and involved far more than an exclusive predominance granted to one element over another. In truth, religion cannot be transformed into a rigid science, except by laying at its basis the fatalistic conception of the universe. If everything is regulated by, and transpires according to inflexible laws, we have but to learn the construction of the machine, and the place in it assigned to us. But if, on the contrary, there exists a moral world, if the divine freedom appeals to the human, knowledge is comparatively insignificant; obedience, surrender, is the essential. Assuredly, the opposition between these two conceptions of religion is absolute ; it is, in truth, the opposition between the fatalistic speculation of Pagan naturalism, and the free and living faith of a true religion.

Thus we see that by its exclusively intellectual tendency. Gnosticism abandons the noble banner of Christian spirituality, and returns to the dualism which was the curse of the ancient world. We shall observe how faithful it was to its principle, and with what often treacherous art it revived the old errors which had brought to ruin the most brilliant civilisation of the world. From this primary and purely speculative character, there resulted the haughty esoterism which reconstituted the aristocracy of intellect, and placed its barrier in the way of the young and the simple-hearted. It was found, in the end, that this privilege turned to the detriment of those who gloried in it, for the rare fruit which they had thus strained upwards to gather from the topmost branches of the tree of science, proved but a dry husk in their hands. Better a thousand times the homely bread broken so freely to the multitudes who gathered round the feet of Christ!

The predominance of the intellectual and speculative element in Gnosticism, must not, however, lead us to conceive of it as a mere philosophical school, at least in the modern meaning of that term. It is erroneous to regard it as simply a philosophy of religion. Such a conception belongs to later modes of thought, and is not in character with the troubled era which produced, beside the so-called Christian Gnosticism, so many analogous systems. Philosophy, especially since the time of Descartes, presents itself to us as entirely distinct from poetry, by the severity of its methods and the rigour of its deductions. It may indeed seek to bring into conformity with its systems, the symbols of an already established and well-defined religion. This is the attempt which has been made by the Hegelianism of our day, with singular boldness of interpretation. But philosophy does not create new symbols, or if it did, it would treat them as simple metaphors not to be seriously accepted. The various provinces of the mind of man are as distinct as the various countries of the world; their boundaries are sharply marked. Imagina- tion finds no place in modern speculation, or, at least, it only lends to it types more or less transparent. It was far otherwise in the earliest age of the Christian era. The religion and philosophy of Paganism—both resting, it is true, on one and the same basis—were constantly confounded. The classic style, with its chaste and lucid forms, had vanished from the intellectual world, no less than from the realm of art. The East overspread the entire West with its myths, its sublime poetry, its heterogeneous faiths. Hence resulted a mental condition not easily to be apprehended by us. In the world of ideas, the impossible had become the ordinary and familiar; men's minds were intoxicated with the philter of the great goddess, who, under the name of Isis, or Cybele, or Diana of Ephesus, was simply nature deified. Placing the infinite beneath, and not above, men strove at any cost to discover it, to animate the idol they had made, as Pygmalion strove to chafe his marble into the warmth of life; to nature was ascribed the creative power; it was supposed to contain hidden, mysterious forces, capable of producing universal life. These forces the eye of the imagination watches at work, like those primordial spirits which Faust beheld, "weaving the living robe of divinity upon the rushing loom of time." Thus does the most absolute naturalism merge into magic and theurgy, and lose itself in a fantastic dream, in which the strangest visions are taken for realities, and form the sequel to a close and abstract argument.

A knowledge of what may be called the intellectual pathology of this period—a period unique in history—is necessary to enable us to appreciate, or even to understand, the appearance of such a phenomenon as Gnosticism. This is only one of the special manifestations of a far more extensive movement, or rather, it is the reaction of that movement on the heart of Christianity. The second and third centuries of our era came, to a large extent, under these combined influences of philo- sophy and religion, and the result was a sort of mystical naturalism, the development of which requires explanation. The religions of nature, after having opened the cycle of Paganism, must needs close it again; for, unaided, man can never wholly free himself from this circle; the soul seeks and yearns after a higher and holier God; sometimes it may even rise to Him with a sudden soaring impulse, but it cannot sustain itself at such a giddy height; it soon falls back under the dominion of natural forces, and returns to its former worship, but with a soul restless and dissatisfied. The old religion has lost that fresh and artless enchantment which breathes in the songs of the Vedas. The melancholy strain predominates, as at the close of a gay festival at Rome or Athens, when the crowns of the guests fall faded at their feet. Man is no more content with the natural phenomena of the bright and fruitful dawning, of the fertilising rain, and the fire "which quivers on the hearth like a bird of golden wing." Beneath the outward manifestation, he seeks the deep, hidden, bound- less cause of all; he falls into a crushing pantheism, which brings him into the presence, not of a living God, but of a yawning abyss, in which there is neither beginning nor end, where everything is moving in one incessant process of evolution. The religion of India, especially in its final form of Buddhism, had given the most perfect expression to pantheistic naturalism; this was its final utterance. Its influence was therefore great in an age when the ancient barriers, by which nations were divided, were everywhere falling. It exercised an unquestionably wider sway than Fariseeism, which was less inclined to asceticism and ecstasy—the two wings, as they were increasingly regarded, by which the soul might be raised above the changing and perishable. Again, the religion of Zoroaster itself had a tendency to modification, as we have seen in tracing out the development of the worship of Mithra. The Greco-Roman religion, especially in Asia Minor and in Egypt, was largely transfused with oriental pantheism, which, with its elastic mythology, would bear any translation. Judaism had not escaped the influence of this widespread movement; even in the land of the prophets, in view of the sanctuary where all the national traditions were deposited, it had breathed the air which had swept over the great forests of India. Essenism was a sort of Jewish Buddhism, which carried into the burning solitudes of the Dead Sea, the same craving for self-annihilation.

The philosophy of the time—that philosophy, at least, which was not satisfied either with Epicureanism, or with the universal scepticism of the new Academy—endeavoured to reduce this naturalistic Pantheism to a system, and it had at its disposal the marvellous instrument of the logic of Plato and Aristotle, the bequest to it of the great classic school. We have already described elsewhere, the great Alexandrine movement, which issued in Neo-Platonism, and which may be regarded as parallel with Gnosticism, since it sprang from the same influences, and reveals the same tendency. This is to Platonism what Gnosticism is to Christianity, with this difference : that the system of Plato lent itself far more readily than the Gospel to such an interpretation, because of the oriental element which so strongly pervaded it; nothing was needed, but the withdrawal of the moral character, to transform it into a purely Asiatic theosophy. Plutarch himself belonged to the same school. This son of Greece, who seems to have made it his task to collect assiduously all the treasures of the East, is in reality a deserter from the West, who has retained only the glorious memories and the luminous language of his country. From a philosophical point of view, he is in truth a perfect Eastern. The true God is to him a God hidden, incomprehensible, whom no creature can know, so much so that a mediating divinity, symbolised in his view by the goddess Isis, was necessary to effect the organisation of matter. The soul attains to the Deity only by means of ecstasy or contemplation, thus emancipating itself from all that is corporeal. We know what development Plutarch gave to the theory of secondary deities and of demons. Even the Stoics, those apostles of stern resistance, who seem at the very antipodes of the despotic East, did not fail to work out, in their own way, the theme of pantheistic naturalism, and to supply elements for the lucubrations of Gnosticism. By uniting matter and reason in the first principle of things, they opened the way for all the combinations of the doctrine of emanation. But the great precursor of Gnosticism was Philo, who, himself the adherent of a monotheistic religion — the very religion which had prepared the way for Christianity — was obliged to submit his creed, as a Jew, to the same process of elaboration, which was necessary for translating the Gospel into an oriental theosophy. It is needless for us to dwell here upon a doctrine, the principal outlines of which we have already traced. Starting from the idea of a hidden, incomprehensible God, who has no contact with the finite, it developed most prominently the theory of intermediary divinities, who, by means of emanation, were able to produce the lower world, which the supreme God could not even touch. This was the world of the Word, or of ideas, which never reaches the reality of personal existence, notwithstanding all the striking and sublime metaphors of Philo. His final goal, like that of the whole East, was asceticism; he would that "as the cicada feeds on the dew, so the soul should live by ecstasy". In vain did he exhaust the sacred texts, and borrow from the Old Testament its most lofty images; he none the less belied its essence, by substituting salvation by means of knowledge and contemplation, for the moral reconciliation proclaimed in doctrine and figure, by all the voices of the prophets. The system of Philo was a true Jewish Gnosticism; and in combination with the various elements we have rapidly indicated, it reappears substantially in all the various forms of Gnosticism.

If we seek to distinguish in these various forms the several constituent elements, we discover the three great schools of thought of the period—Hellenism, Orientalism, and Christianity. From the first of these, Gnosticism derived its name, and that purely intellectual character which reduces religion to a mere speculation of the reason. From the second, it borrowed its pantheistic naturalism, full of a sombre sadness and a bitter despair. From the third, it derived, in a changed and mutilated form, the notion of redemption; and this is the distinguishing point between Christian Gnosticism and the Gnosticism of Philo. We are conscious that the great crisis of the Gospel has intervened between the two doctrines : it is no longer possible to rest satisfied with a simple explanation of the universe, such as is given in the books of the Alexandrine Jew. The work of Christ has produced a great convulsion in the minds of men. It must, at any cost, find a place in a system which makes any claim to interpret the Gospel, and if that system still bears the blemish of an ineffaceable Pantheism, it must spend its strength in vain efforts to despoil the religion of love and liberty of its true character. Redemption must be treated as Philo treated the free creation ; it must be reduced to a mere cosmological fact.

Before entering on the classification and exposition of the various systems of Gnosticism, we must first point out two general principles common to them all. They all incline to Docetism; they have a tendency to resolve a tangible reality into a mere semblance. This is a natural consequence of the principles of dualism. Associating evil with the corporeal element, they cannot admit that the Redeemer can have had any true contact with matter; they hold that He can only have assumed a seeming, impalpable, finer than aerial form, the shadow of a shade. Neither the incarnation nor the crucifixion can enter as actual facts into the Gnostic theory. Nor is it the corporeal element alone which is opposed to the absolute good; all that is finite, limited, transitory, is placed in the same category. Contingent realities are of no value; individual beings are as the foam formed on the ocean and melting into it again. The one essential is the idea, the knowledge, the key of the universal enigma; history is but its fluctuating, fleeting expression. Hence the second trait, common to all Gnostic systems, the contempt of history, which becomes a sort of parable or mythology, designed to translate the ideal world into visible symbols. This explains the really wild licence of Gnostic symbolism. It imagines it has exalted the Gospel, because it has given it an illimitable sphere, and made the universe its arena; it does not see that it has lowered it by all the distance which separates the moral from the physical, since it reduces it to a mere theogony after the manner of Hesiod. Not only does it appropriate the facts in order to mould them at its will, but it takes no less liberty with the texts, by means of a perpetual system of allegorising, which gives full play to the imagination. When words are treated merely as the medium of preconceived ideas, they lend themselves to every invention of the mind; they may be played with like the pieces on a draught-board.

In employing so arbitrary an exegesis, the Gnostics, as Irenaeus complained, "tore the truth limb from limb". ''They are", he adds, " like a man, who, possessing the likeness of a king made by a great artist with precious stones, should remove those precious stones, and, readjusting them, should clumsily produce the image of a fox or of a dog, all the while pretending to have preserved the noble outline, because the same jewels still sparkle before our eyes."

Faithful to the eclecticism of the time. Gnosticism gathered symbols and allegories on all hands; it drew from Pagan sources no less than from the sacred books of the Jews and the Christians. The fundamental theme of all these systems is the production of finite and contingent existence by means of emanation, or again by the blending of the Divine principle with eternal matter; the multiplied lives thus generated all return to the original unity; the Divine spark within them seeks its source again. Between the sphere of the Divine and the sphere of matter, lies the region of the intermediary powers, which serve as links between the two worlds ; this is the region of the psychical. Naturalistic Pantheism has an infinite variety of forms, but these are its fundamental principles.

The main symbols designed to embody this universal element of Gnosticism may be classed under a few dominant types. The religions of Nature first of all deified the stars, because of the great influence they exert upon our planet; the sun was long the great divinity of Asia, the burning focus, as it were, whence emanated both death and life. The sidereal myths also play an important part in Gnosticism; the stars represent in that system the inferior gods presiding over the world of change and of matter. Number is the most elementary and obvious principle of order and harmony in the life of Nature; it expresses the measure and almost the idea itself. Oriental Paganism was led into the complicated calculations of astrology, whence it thought itself capable of deducing the law of our destinies. Pythagorean philosophy was entirely constructed on this basis. We shall see how the Gnostics have developed that which may be called the mythology of numbers, and what place was occupied in their systems by the Ogdoas, the Hebdomas, and all the numerical combinations. Anthropomorphism is the most natural of all symbols; hence it filled a prominent place in almost all idolatrous religions, long before it received the brilliant and poetic transformation of Greek humanism. Pantheistic naturalism, moreover, may be said to be perpetually under the spell of a voluptuous enchantment ; it gravitates altogether towards material pleasures, and delights in representing these to itself by the coarsest symbols. Transferring the relations of the sexes to the sphere of the gods, it always conceives of its divinities by couples or Syzygice. Whatever attempts are made to refine it in the course of ages, it undergoes no true change. It reappears in the so-called Christian Gnosticism with the same tendencies, filling the void regions of the absolute with those sensual conceptions which had degraded all the ancient mythologies; nor does Gnosticism scruple yet further to draw largely from these mythologies, both from the pure and impure, to enrich and adorn its allegories. From Judaism it borrows the ladder of light, on which the angels ascend and descend, setting up, in the immensities of space, that scale of emanations, which reaches from the infinite heights of silence down to the manifold forms of material existence. The Old Testament also supplies elements for its unworthy travesty of the God who formed our world and all the lower orders of beings which live on the dust of the earth. The notion of redemption, not less distorted than that of creation, is taken from the Gospel, and the history of Jesus becomes the most fruitful and also the most strangely falsified of the Gnostic symbols. Thus the four principal sources of the symbolism of the Gnostics are astrology, numerical combinations, anthropomorphism, and the history of religions.

Such, in its general characteristics, is the language used in the schools, which are at the same time sanctuaries, for the symbols are not mere metaphors; they are accepted literally; the heated imagination lays hold of them; the mind surrendered to unhealthy excitement, no longer distinguishes between the conventional sign and the thing signified; Gnosticism believes in the sign, as the Canaanite believed in his Baal, and the Egyptian in his bull Apis.

Many attempts have been made to classify rigorously the various Gnostic systems. Some have sought the principle by which to distinguish them in their historical and national origin; but in an age of universal syncretism, when all barriers were broken down, a difference of nationality did not suffice to constitute a difference of tendency, so much the less as Gnosticism only came into being in countries which were all alike under the influence of the East. Others, identifying Gnosticism with the philosophy of religion, have divided it into three principal schools, according to the place assigned by each to one of the three great forms of the religion of the past. We have first the systems, like those of Basilides and Valentinus, which acknowledged some kind of legitimacy in the old faiths, and a gradual evolution of the religious consciousness. Next come those which accept only one form of the ancient religions, namely, Judaism; this is the Gnosticism of the Clementines. Lastly, we have the doctrine of the Ophites, and the far higher teaching of Marcion, who holds that truth finds its final expression in Jesus Christ, and that all that went before was but frightful error. This classification errs by considering Gnosticism too exclusively as a philosophical movement, and not enough as a combination of religion and speculation. The most reasonable division of the Gnostic systems seems to us that which takes as its basis the position assumed by them towards the God of the Old Testament. The question is twofold. It comprehends not only the degree of respect with which the revelations and institutions of Judaism are regarded, but also the more or less absolute character of the dualism of the system. In truth, the God of the Old Testament is the God who created the heavens and the earth. If He is regarded not as a God hostile to the supreme Deity, but simply as a subordinate divinity, as in the "Timaeus" of Plato, the world which is His creation is not under the ban of a positive curse; there is still something good in it; its history, before Christ, is not of necessity a tissue of unrelieved and unmitigated evil. On the other hand, if the God who created the earth and the heavens, is a God absolutely evil, and at war with the higher world, then creation is in itself a curse, and His reign is but the continuous evolution of evil. In the former systems, the world is not the product of an eternal principle, opposed to the supreme Being; it is itself contained in the depths of the primal abyss; it is produced, doubtless, by a series of downward steps, but obviously it is not in itself absolutely evil, as it is in the second class of Gnostic systems, in which it is treated as the issue of a principle eternally distinct from the supreme Deity.

We see that the notion of the Creator God, or the Demiurgos, marks with great distinctness the line of demarcation between the various schools, although there is no radical difference between them, because no Gnostic school recognises a free creation.

I. The Gnostics of the First School. Valentinus and his Followers.

In this sketch of Gnosticism, we pass by scarcely-developed systems, like that of Basilides, which compare the first principle to a confused germ, from which all the various substances are successively evolved by a sort of mysterious disintegration.

With Valentinus, Gnosticism assumes the form of a complete system, coherent in all its parts; the fusion between the Christian and Pagan elements is effected with profound art. All the lines of revelation are prolonged into indefinite perspective; behind the foreground of the Gospel narrative, extends a radiant and receding distance, which affects the mind, and especially the imagination, with a sense of dizziness. The Christian consciousness is indeed soon able to dispel the illusion; it is not slow to recognise that this brilliant metaphysical vista minifies that which it pretends to magnify, since it destroys the distinction between the creation and the Creator; but let that voice of the Christian soul be but silent, and the illusion is complete. It is easy to understand how, from these giddy heights, the son of the East or of Egypt might look down with pitying contempt on the doctrine of the Church, with its sharply-drawn and simple outlines. Valentinus knew how to cast over his philosophy the veil of a false and flowery poetry, in perfect harmony with the taste of an age of decline, which could no longer appreciate the pure and quiet beauty of high art. In the same manner, he transfused into all his teaching, that sense of the bitter and tragic in existence, which was the distinctive feature of the Roman decadence; the over- whelming sadness of this period of universal decline, which seemed to close for ever the age of strength and health and youth, embodied itself in cunning symbols, and lent to them a morbid charm. Valentinus was, after his manner, a great lyric poet, expressing the sorrows of his time in the eccentric form which pleased him best. Moreover, all this sadness might be lightly accepted, because it did not lead to humility, nor call for repentance; it left erect the great idol of Paganism—humanity, which could behold itself deified upon the naked summits of the Valentinian metaphysics, no less than upon the golden heights of Olympus. Man was still set forth as the most perfect realisation of the divine; the fall was only a necessary transition from the divine infinite to the human finite; redemption required neither repentance nor sacrifice, but simply the return of the finite to the infinite, and especially the knowledge of that return, which is Gnosticism. Salvation is then here also a matter of knowledge. The Pagan of yesterday might find such a reconstruction of his theories cheap, and easier a hundred times than the inward renewal, the baptism of water and fire, which begins with penitent tears, and is perfected under the consuming action of the spirit of holiness. It was more convenient, while, at the same time, it seemed more poetical, to transfer the drama of redemption to the realms of the infinite, than to give it our sinful earth as its theatre, and as its actors free moral beings, called to a death to self at the foot of the Cross.

We know but little about Valentinus himself. According to Epiphanius, he was a native of the shores of Egypt, and received his philosophical training at Alexandria. Thence he is supposed to have come to Rome under Antoninus Pius, and only established himself as the head of a school in Cyprus. Tertullian asserts that he sought the episcopate, and that the check given to his ambition drove him into the ranks of the enemies of the Church. There is nothing to sustain this accusation, which the fiery African may easily have accepted in the heat of passion. There is no necessity for assigning petty spleen as the cause of the direction taken by the mind of Valentinus. He followed what has been one of the most enticing tracks of speculation in all ages, and was led into it by the bent of his own genius. There is no injustice in accusing him of a lofty pride of intellect. The textual fragment of one of his letters, which Epiphanius has preserved, breathes the most arrogant contempt for simple faith. "I come to speak to you," he says, "of things ineffable, secret, higher than the heavens, which cannot be understood by principalities or powers, nor by anything beneath, nor by any creature, unless it be by those whose intelligence can know no change." We can fancy we see this man, as Tertullian shows him to us, knitting his brow, and saying, with an air of mystery, "This is profound".

The doctrine of Valentinus is far more easily epitomised than that of most of the Gnostics, because it forms one systematic whole. I It is not, properly speaking, dualistic, since his great aim is to show by what process of degeneracy, matter proceeds from the first principle; it is also moderate in its estimate of Judaism and of its God, and consequently in the sentence it passes upon creation. It is Platonist rather than Aristotelian, for it attaches great importance to the ideal world. Human history, before it is enacted in our world of mire and darkness, is unfolded in the higher sphere of the ideal. The tragedy of existence is played in three acts : first, in the highest region, which is called the Pleroma; then in the intermediate sphere; and lastly, upon earth. It is in substance the same drama throughout; since it always treats of the trouble under which the universe groans, by reason of the aspiration of the finite after the infinite, trouble which resolves itself into the universal harmony, of which knowledge is the master-key; it is Gnosticism which reveals to every creature his true rank and destiny. The originality of the Valentinian teaching consists in its having depicted, with impassioned eloquence, the agony and ardent yearning of creatures separated from the absolute principle of their being, and in its having thus brought the pantheistic theosophy as close as possible to the idea of redemption, while yet failing to reach it. It is strange to see a system, idealist at its commencement, yielding to the influence of the grossest mythologies of the East, to such a degree as to borrow from them the idea of those pairings, or Syzygics, which in these occupy such a conspicuous place; nor is even the semblance of a metaphor retained; the allegory is carried to its furthest limits, and offers dangerous food for sensual imaginations. Thus the most purely ethereal and the most coarsely material elements are blended in these half-philosophical, half-legendary conceptions.

The principle of all things—the Immortal, the Ineffable, He who deserves the name of Father in the absolute sense—is an unfathomable abyss. He is linked neither to space nor time; He is above all thought, and, as it were, shut up within Himself. Around Him is eternal silence. The Father is not willing to remain in solitude, for He is all love, and love can only exist where it has an object. Thus He produced by emanation the Intellect and the Truth. The Intellect is the consciousness which the Father has of Himself; it is the only Son, His living image, who alone makes known the Father. The Intellect is at the same time the Truth, because of this identity. The Intellect and the Truth produce the Word and the Life. This is the great quaternion of the absolute. The Intellect finds its perfect expression in the Word; that expression is not a mere symbol, since it is also the Life. The Word and the Life produce Man and the Church. What does this mean, if not that the absolute can only be fully manifested in humanity? The transcendently divine blends with the essentially human. The Intellect and the Truth produce for the glory of the Father ten emanations, which are called Aeons or Eternities. The Word and the Life produce twelve emanations, a number less perfect than the ten. The supernal sphere of the Pleroma is then complete. Thus there rises into the infinite that ladder of emanations which Tertullian called, in his powerful language, the gemoniae of the Deity. Even into this highest and ideal sphere, discord enters. This is inevitable, unless perfect equilibrium be maintained between the twofold force which animates the Aeons, which are, on the one hand, drawn towards their centre that is, to the abyss from which they spring ; and, on the other hand, are subject to the centrifugal power of projection or emanation. They proceed from the infinite and tend to it, yet they are not the infinite, and are not to be confounded with it. The moment that the equilibrium of the two forces ceases, the harmony of the Pleroma is broken. This catastrophe is brought about by the last of the twelve Aeons, produced by the Word and the Life, which is the twenty-eighth emanation. This Aeon, finding herself on the confines of the region of light, is consumed with the desire to be reunited to the Father; she is not content with the portion of the divine essence which has been allotted to her as her share; she compares it with the infinite, the absolute, and deems it a poor and miserable heritage; she aspires therefore to lose herself in the silent abyss of the first principle. This last of the Aeons of the Pleroma, which is called Sophia, or Wisdom, has yet larger ambitions; she is desirous, in imitation of the first principle, to become herself a producer, but to produce alone, without the aid of the Aeon, which forms with her a Syzygia, or divine couple. But the uncreated can alone produce under such conditions; for all inferior orders of being, two elements are required for the production of anything—the feminine element, or the vague and formless substance, and the masculine or formative element. Hence the necessity of Syzygiae. Now, the Sophia is the feminine Aeon. She is therefore capable of producing only a formless being—an abortion. In her rashness, she has broken the harmony of the Pleroma; discord has entered, and it is impossible to tell where it may end. All the Aeons supplicate the Father to arrest it by consoling Sophia, who bursts into tears and groans at sight of the shapeless being to which, in her isolation and impotence, she has given birth. The salvation of the Pleroma is contingent on the production of a new emanation. The Intellect and the Truth give birth to the Christ and the Holy Spirit; the number of the Aeons being thus raised to thirty. These two new Aeons represent the power of restoration of harmony, and order. They begin by ejecting from the Pleroma the malformed product of Wisdom; the Father sets up the boundary, called also the Cross; He places it between the higher world and the lower, to which belongs the wretched abortion of which Wisdom is the parent; this abortion is designated by the name Achamoth. The Christ and the Holy Spirit give it a form, and save it from losing itself in utter confusion. Then they return to the Pleroma, and instruct the Aeons in the eternal order of things and the grandeur of their origin, for they all proceed from the same principle. The Pleroma, thus delivered from rash ambitions, is restored to harmony, and praises the Father. All the Aeons together produce, as a pledge of this harmony, and as a testimony of their gratitude, one last Aeon, who is called Jesus, or the Saviour, and who is the fruit of the Pleroma. Thus is completed the first part of this trilogy, which comprehends three worlds, like the poem of Dante, and which only reproduces the same drama under different forms.

Let us attempt to translate all this ontological mythology into the exact style of metaphysics, bearing in mind that Gnosticism never separated ideas from the legendary tissue in which it embodied them. The absolute must necessarily emerge from its state of immobility; a hidden principle is at work in the dark abyss, and elicits from it the universal life, which develops itself by successive stages. But this manifestation of the absolute issues of necessity in an imperfect life; from this fatal imperfection results a sorrowful yearning after the infinite, and this aspiration only finds its goal and satisfaction in the knowledge of the eternal and normal relation of all beings with the absolute, as derived from it, and still constituting a part of it. The absolute is found again in them, or rather they are found in it; it follows that the finite and imperfect existence appears in the brightness of the Pleroma, "like a little spot upon a white tunic". Thus salvation in this higher sphere of life proceeds from knowledge (gnosis). The Christ is the determining, formative power, the revealer by pre-eminence.

Let us pass on to the second act which is played in the vague regions bordering on the Pleroma. Here the poetic and metaphysical genius of Valentinus is most fully manifested. Creation and redemption are one and the same to him, for our world was only produced for the consolation and restoration of that unhappy son of Wisdom who, cut off from the region of light, yet could not lose the recollection of it. The Christ of the Pleroma, and the Holy Spirit, have left him to himself, after giving him a definite form; he cannot be consoled for the loss of that bright vision; the sweet fragrance of their presence abides with him, and he cries with tears for their return.

The Sophia of the Pleroma has communicated all the fire which consumed her to Achamoth, that shapeless product of her daring aspirations; he again, following her example, darts upwards towards the infinite, painfully beating his wings against the impassable boundary, and crying out passionately for the Divine light and life. He is the meanest creature upon our world, and yet there is none more noble by reason of his ardent longing after God, and that ceaseless, sacred yearning which will not let him rest. Sometimes a bright smile breaks through his tears; it comes at the recollection of the brief glimpse that was granted him of the Pleroma. How can we fail to recognise in him, the image or personification of that race of fallen gods who, as they move on earth, carry with them the memory of their heavenly origin? Never was the exile of the soul, the daughter of the light, described in grander poetry. Our world is born of the agonies of Achamoth; of these the tissue of earthly existence is woven; his broken heart throbs in all nature. Hence the universal sigh which seems to swell the bosom of earth as sobs upheave the heart of a weeping child.

The Pleroma has compassion on Achamoth. It sends him Jesus, or the Saviour—that blessed fruit of its own harmony. Jesus delivers Achamoth from the burden of his griefs, and after having drawn these from his breast, he gives them the form of a concrete substance. Thus is produced the lower world, which will become in its turn the scene of the same sorrows and deliverances as the two higher regions. The sombre sadness of Achamoth becomes the material element; his despair is the demoniacal essence; his fear and aspiration give birth to the intermediate or psychical element, which is neither matter nor spirit.

Nothing could be more ingenious than this attempt to resolve the dualism, which had so long weighed upon the thought of the ancients, by means of this sort of crystallisation or petrifaction of the feelings of the exiled Aeon. According to Irenaeus, Valentinus carried this poetical theory of the creation still further. The streams and fountains which we behold are the tears of Achamoth, while the soft light which gladdens us is the radiation of his joy, when he recalls the visit of the heavenly emanations. The Demiurgos has a place in this system; he is born of the terror of the Aeon, the salutary fear which is the beginning of wisdom, since it accompanies the ardent supplication which is granted by the Pleroma. While Achamoth occupies the Ogdoas, or the heavenly Jerusalem, the Demiurgos is consigned to the Hehdomas, composed of seven gods, which are themselves seven Aeons. These symbolical figures mark the difference of the two regions, for the Ogdoas is the sphere where dwells the Spirit, raised immeasurably above the psychical, who has produced seventy beings which share in his spiritual essence. The Demiurgos, as his name indicates, is the creator and organiser of our world; he believes himself to be its supreme God, and so declares himself to Moses and to all the men of the Old Testament. "I am God," he says, "and there is none beside me". Men were created by the Demiurgos; their body is composed of material elements, but their soul is of psychical essence. Achamoth, unknown to the earth-god, communicates some sparks of the Spirit to a select number of men. These constitute the moral aristocracy of mankind; they are the spiritual in opposition to the psychical and material beings. Men are thus classed by the predominance in their nature of one or other of the three elements which constitute this sphere of existence.

The prophets of the Old Testament were only the organs of the Demiurgos. In the fulness of time the Redeemer appeared; He is the third manifestation of the power of restoration and of harmony, consequently, the third Saviour. The school of Valentinus is divided on the question of the nature of His body. The Westerns ascribed it to a psychical origin; they supposed it to have been formed by the Demiurgos, and held that the spirit only entered into it at His baptism. The Easterns, on the contrary, pronounced the body to be, from its origin, of spiritual essence. Absolute docetism was the consequence of this conception. Both schools, however, admitted the miraculous birth of the Saviour.

Messiah passed through the womb of Mary, ''as water through a channel". He enlightened the Demiurgos as to the existence of the Pleroma, and then carried the true light to the spiritual portion of mankind, which was destined to receive it. Achamoth sees the gates of everlasting light open before him, and forgets his long distress. The Demiurgos takes his place in the Ogdoas; the spiritual men—the true Gnostics—united to the beings emanated from Achamoth, are delivered for ever from that which is perishable, and enter into the ineffable blessedness of the Pleroma. Matter vanishes, consumed by fire. It is no longer more than a shadow upon the bright substance of supreme felicity. In all the schools of Gnosticism we see that illumination is the substitute for redemption. Sacrifice, in any true sense, has no place where sin has no reality. Everything hinges on the relations of the finite with the infinite, and not on those of the moral creature with the Holy God. Thus all this brilliant metaphysical speculation is hung over an empty place; it issues in a hopeless fatalism, in an absolute and capricious predestination, which limits salvation to the chosen ones of Wisdom, the sons of light. It is indeed worthy of observation, that predestination made its first appearance in Christianity under the garb of heresy. It was the very soul of Gnosticism. "The Valentinians," says Irenaeus, "feel themselves under no necessity to attain by their deeds to the spiritual nature; they possess it inherently, and regard themselves as perfectly saved by divine right. Just as gold, which has been buried in clay, does not thus forfeit its beauty, but retains its true nature unalloyed, so do these men receive no hurt from all the sensual indulgences which they allow themselves, but preserve their spiritual essence".

The Old Testament, and the God whom it reveals, are not treated by Valentinus with much reverence. The Demiurgos, however, sins only through ignorance; he possesses a relative truth. He himself is to be raised to the borders of the Pleroma. There is not, then, positive and absolute opposition between the two Testaments, notwithstanding the scorn of the sect with regard to Hebrew prophecy.

So bold and poetical a system as that of Valentinus, opened a large career for inventive and subtle imaginations. The fundamental theme was variously modified, according to the caprice of each. We need not enter in detail into these idle vagaries of the mind, carried about by every passing wind, without the steadying ballast of the moral life. Among the chief disciples of Valentinus, may be named Bardesanes of Edessa, Marcus, Ptolemy, and Heracleon. These confined themselves to making variations on the theme of these tortuous metaphysics. These systems passed by the most sublime and original portion of the doctrine of Valentinus, that which relates to the fall and the aspirations of Achamoth, that child of Wisdom placed on the borders of the Pleroma, as the poetical personification of our fall, and who is ever divided between bitter memories and ardent longings. This gap is filled by a curious anonymous document in the Coptic language, lately discovered. The date is doubtful; it evidently belongs to the period when Valentinian Gnosticism had reached its full development,—about the close, therefore, of the second century. It is entitled "Pistis Sophia", the Believing Wisdom. The general dogmas of the Valentinian system are found in it, though half buried in a luxurious and monotonous vegetation. The theme is always the same—a gnosis, or hidden doctrine, which brings salvation by simple illumination. Jesus Christ returns from the heavens into which He had reascended, and appears to His disciples on the Mount of Olives, to reveal to them the sublime mysteries of the truth. They form around Him the inner and privileged circle of the spiritual ones, whose charge it is to transmit this hidden manna to the pneumatic men of future generations. All these revelations revolve around the destiny of Sophia, who here symbolises, far more clearly than among the early Valentinians, the melancholy condition of the human soul, which, as the punishment for having sought to overpass the limits of its original sphere, is tormented by the cosmical powers, among which we recognise the Demiurgos. He produces, by emanation, a terrible power with a lion face, which, surrounded by other similar emanations, terrifies the noble and ardent exiled Sophia, even in the dark regions of matter, flashing before her eyes a false and misguiding brightness. Nevertheless, she does not lose courage; she still hopes and believes. Hence she deserves the name of the Believing Wisdom. Twelve times she invokes the Deliverer in strains of passionate and truly sublime supplication; these are her twelve repentances. Her deliverance is accomplished by means of an equal number of interventions on the part of Jesus. As the fall, or sin, is nothing more than an obscuration produced by matter, so salvation is simply a return to the light. This division of the lamentations of Sophia and the interventions of Jesus, produces a wearisome amount of repetition; the aspirations of the soul are, however, rendered with a force, all the more poetic, because so largely derived from the Old Testament. In particular, all the penitential Psalms are applied to Sophia, being wrested from their natural meaning.

"O Light of lights," she exclaims, "thou whom I have seen from the beginning, listen to the cry of my repenting. Save me, Light, from my own thoughts, which are evil. I have fallen into the infernal regions. False lights have led me astray, and now I am lost in these chaotic depths. I cannot spread my wings and return to my place, for the evil powers sent forth by my enemy, and most of all this lion-faced power, hold me captive. I have cried for help, but my voice dies in the night. I have lifted up my eyes to the heights, that thou mayest come to my aid, O Light. But I have found none but hostile powers, who rejoice in my affliction, and seek to increase it, by putting out the spark of thine which is in me. Now, O Light of truth, in the simplicity of my heart I have followed the false brightness which I mistook for thine. My sin is wholly before thee. Leave me not to suffer longer, for I have cried to thee from the beginning. It is for thee that I am plunged into this affliction. Behold me in this place weeping, crying out again for the light, which I have seen upon the heights. Hence the rage of those who keep the doors of my prison. If thou wilt come and save me, great is thy mercy; grant my supplication. Deliver me from this dark matter, lest I be, as it were, swallowed up in it."

"O Light, cast upon me the flame of thy compassion, for I am in bitter anguish. Haste thee, hear me. I have waited for my spouse that he might come and fight for me, and he comes not. Instead of light, I have received darkness and matter. I will praise thee, I will glorify thy name; let my hymn rise with acceptance to thee at the gates of light. Let my whole soul be purified from matter, and dwell in the divine city. Let all souls which receive the mystery be admitted therein".

The same cry rises twelve times to the Deliverer. "I am become," says Sophia again, "like the demon who dwells in matter, in whom all light is extinct. I am myself become matter. My strength is turned to stone in me. I have set my love in thee, O Light, leave me not in the chaos. Deliver me by thy knowledge. My trust is in thee; I will rejoice, I will sing praise to thy glory, because thou hast had pity on me. Give me thy baptism, and wash away my sins."

This mythology, full of poetic sadness, was skilfully spread as a veil over the abstractions of Gnosticism, and adapted them to the taste of subtle and unhealthy minds. The dialogue between Jesus and His disciples, in spite of its uniformity, pleased the readers of the apocryphal Gospels, and satisfied those feverish imaginations which had lost the sense of true beauty. Pride found its gratification in these new mysteries, which emulated in every respect those of Eleusis or of Mithra.

III. The Gnostics of the Second School, (a) The Ophites. Marcion.

The special feature of the second Gnostic school is that in its teachings the Demiurgos appears as a decidedly maleficent being, instead of simply belonging to an inferior order, ignoring the Pleroma, as in the systems of Basilides and the earlier Valentinians. This school is inaugurated by some heretics called Ophites, because they made the serpent a beneficent being, in order the better to mark their opposition to the God of the Old Testament. His foe was, in their view, a deliverer. They indulged in all sorts of fanciful inventions to explain the origin of the world. The first Ophites make their appearance at the commencement of the second century, but they had successors in the time of Irenaeus, who added fresh absurdities to their system. We simply mention them here.

The most eminent representative of the second school of Gnosticism is Marcion. If it is always difficult to separate a system from the person of its author, this is especially the case with the doctrine of this famous heretic, for it bears so distinctly the impress of his ardent but narrow soul, passionately attached to Christianity, but unjust (as passion itself even when its object is the most noble and elevated) ; enamoured of the highest moral ideal, but finding means to falsify it by unsound exaggeration. Grave, however, as were these errors of Marcion, he nevertheless commands our respect by the nobleness of his character and the grandeur of some of his thoughts, which have become causes of discord only because he has presented them without the qualifications which would have completed them. Marcion possessed the genius of a reformer. He was a Saul of Tarsus, ever abiding under the burning brightness of the revealing flash on the road to Damascus, never attaining to the full and calm light of a settled faith. An impetuous disciple of St. Paul, he compromises the cause he has embraced, by disregarding the grand and suggestive synthesis of the Apostolic preaching, and giving prominence only to its negative and polemical side. He believes himself called to renew perpetually the scene at Antioch; he treats the Church like another Cephas, whose attachment to Judaism demands a reprimand, and, under the name of Judaism, he comprehends all which is more or less remotely connected with the religion of the Old Testament. This was a deviation from the broad and profound views of the Apostle of the Gentiles, with regard to the relations of the two covenants, and in particular of the preparatory province of the law. Thus did this ultra Paulinist fail to fulfil the noble mission devolved upon him, for nothing was more opportune in his day than a reaction against Judaising tendencies, which were the more dangerous, that they were disguised under new names. The spirit of reformation is distinguished from the spirit of revolution in this—that it destroys only the parasitic growths, without touching the vital parts of the tree.

To be just, we must bear in mind the circumstances under which Marcion grew up. A native of the shores of the Euxine, born in the year 120, he was educated amidst a school which borrowed from the apocryphal literature of the Jews the warm and vivid tints with which it depicted the future of the Church, and was thus led into positive materialism. Marcion's tendencies were altogether in an opposite direction. The son of a devout bishop, he was distinguished by an exalted piety, verging on asceticism; one of his first steps was to make a gift to the Church of a large sum of money. We cannot admit the serious charge made by Tertullian against his moral character; it was so common to compare heresy to spiritual adultery, that a bold figure, interpreted by inveterate malignity, may easily have grown into a calumny not intended. Probably the opposition offered by Marcion to Judaising Christianity was fierce and immoderate, as might be expected from such a man. In consequence of some differences, in which his father seems to have taken part against him, Marcion repaired to Rome. This was the great theatre upon which every inventor of a new thing sought to enact his part, well knowing that there was no surer way of gaining publicity for his ideas. Marcion had occupied himself very little with metaphysics up to this time; he had no taste for all the subtleties of Valentinian Gnosticism. The bent of his mind was far more to Christian practice than to theosophy. In his keen antipathy to the Judaisers, he included the Old Testament itself, without embodying his views in any definite system. It was necessary, however, that he should give a speculative basis to his ideas, for they could not exercise any important influence while they remained in a fragmentary form. This necessity explains the subsequent reconciliation between Marcion and Gnosticism. At Rome he met a moderate Gnostic, who had abandoned the learned and poetic ontology of the Valentinians, and who shared Marcion's violent antipathy to Judaism. This man was named Cerdo, and was a Syrian by birth. Discarding the elaborate genealogy of the Aeons, he was satisfied with recognising a visible and inferior God in addition to the supreme and invisible Being; the latter represented goodness, the former justice. The opposition between the Gospel and the Old Testament was thus vindicated. Cerdo combined with these views a very decided tendency to asceticism. Marcion's predispositions were all in favour of such a system; he supplemented it, and imparted to it the fervour and boldness of his own nature. Thus he made it a really powerful doctrine, which gathered many adherents.

He seems to have always dreaded schism. When Polycarp came to Rome he sought his friendship, but the patriarch of the churches of Asia Minor repelled him with the words, "I know thee : thou art the firstborn of Satan." Addressing himself one day to the elders of the Church of Rome, Marcion asked them what Jesus had meant when He spoke of the piece of new cloth, which, being put in, rends the old garment. Not content with their answer, which was full of wisdom, he boldly applied these words to the Old Testament, which he likened to the worn-out vesture : "And I also," he exclaimed, "will rend the Church, and the rent shall be for ever." It is difficult to believe, with Tertullian, that such a man should have sought, at the close of his life, reconciliation with orthodoxy.

Marcion is distinguished from the other Gnostics, first, by his strong repudiation of that sort of intellectual aristocracy, so scornful of the profanum vulgum, which set up between the learned and the ignorant the very barrier which the Lord had cast down. Marcion did not even sanction the distinction commonly made in public worship, between the members of the Church and the catechumens, so fully was he taken up with the desire to popularise the truth. He also entirely rejected the method of allegorical interpretations, and argued for an adherence to the natural meaning of the texts, without recourse to a compliant exegesis, which avoided all the real difficulties, merging them in an arbitrary symbolism. Refusing to adopt the artifices by which difficult texts, or those which gave occasion for scandal, were disposed of, he preferred to set aside that which he could not interpret, and he made a sacred book for his own use, which contained, according to him, the true tradition of the teaching of Jesus Christ. He found this pure tradition only in the writings of St. Paul and in the Gospel of Luke, which he ascribed to the direct influence of the Apostle of the Gentiles. Even this he accepted only with reservations, and eliminated from it all that was incompatible with his system. Thus Marcion became the father of purely internal and subjective criticism.

There has been much discussion as to whether he recognised two or three essential principles of things. It is certain that he established an eternal opposition between the supreme God and uncreated matter, the source of all evil. The moot point is, whether the Demiurgos, or the inferior God, who created the world, was raised by him to the rank of a third principle. It seems that such was really his idea, for the opposition between the Demiurgos and the supreme God is too radical to admit the supposition that the former proceeded from the latter. Again, matter is clearly distinguished from the Demiurgos, since the first man was condemned for this very offence of having violated the law of his Creator under the influence of matter. It is better to adhere to the co-existence of three distinct principles, with this reservation, that the material principle, being essentially negative, cannot be compared with the two others; the system, after all, therefore, is essentially dualistic. We shall not attempt to introduce rigorous exactness into the metaphysics of a school which makes practical religion its absorbing theme. Marcion does not endeavour to connect the created world with the higher sphere by a long chain of emanations or Aeons. The supreme God of his system remains motionless through all eternity; He only emerges from this state of quiescence at the time of salvation. The Demiurgos creates the world without any suspicion of the existence of a power higher than his own; he fashions incoherent matter, and forms from it the human body, into which he breathes life. He gives man a law, but without rendering him capable of fulfilling it. The fall of man is laid to the charge of the Demiurgos. It is not simply the visible God, as opposed to the invisible; he represents further, strict, implacable justice, which deals with the external alone, recognises only a mercenary and imperfect virtue, and takes vengeance for evil rather than punishes it. The Demiurgos is the evil tree of the parable, which is known by its fruit. The Old Testament is the monument of this maleficent activity, the Jewish people is the people of the Demiurge, the law is the emanation of his cruel justice, and the miserable destinies of Israel reveal the impotence of a God who could not even secure the happy fortunes of his favourites. Paganism belongs to matter and to the demons, as Judaism to the Demiurgos. Such is the state of the world up to the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius.

Suddenly, without transition or preparation, like the lightning clearing the cloud, the supreme God appears in the person of Jesus Christ. This supreme, invisible, unknown God is sovereign goodness, love, as opposed to justice. He is never angry; He can only pity and pardon. Thus He grants salvation not to a legal righteousness, but to the trusting faith which surrenders to Him. Here is the echo of one of the grandest utterances of Paul. Unhappily, it is wrested from its true meaning, for love, apart from righteousness, is but blind kindness, weak indulgence. The merciful, apart from the holy God, is no longer the Most High.

Marcion attempted to intensify the contrast between the Demiurgos and the supreme God, by drawing up a long list of antitheses between the Old and New Testaments. While the Messiah of the Demiurgos is a national and local Messiah, Jesus belongs to all mankind. The former promises only earthly good; the latter speaks altogether of heaven. The Demiurgos commands the children of Israel to carry away the treasures of Egypt; Jesus directs His disciples not to take so much as a staff in their hand. The Jewish God sends a bear to devour the children who had mocked Elisha, and calls down fire from heaven upon his enemies; the Gospel teaches only kindness and forgiveness. Lastly, the merciful Saviour chose as His disciples the outcasts from Judaism. These antitheses he sums up in these eloquent words : "While Moses lifts up his hands to heaven, invoking the slaughter of the enemies of Israel, Jesus stretches out His hands upon the cross for the salvation of all mankind." On the one side, is the spirit of revenge; on the other, is the triumph of love. Jesus is the direct manifestation of the good and in- visible God. In the fifteenth year of Tiberius it pleased God to come down to Nazareth, a city of Galilee. It was not possible for Him to come into contact with matter; Marcion, therefore, holds the most positive docetism. The birth of Jesus was only apparent. His body only a phantom. He took nothing from the world of the Demiurgos, unless it were the name of Messiah, for the God of the Old Testament proclaimed the coming of a Jewish Saviour, and His prophets, one after another, predicted it. This inferior Saviour will indeed come, but only for the chosen people; to them He will bring a salvation worthy of them—one, namely, that is purely material and earthly. Meanwhile, the Demiurgos stirs up the hatred of the Jews against this rival power which has arisen in Jerusalem. Jesus is sacrificed under his influence. The death of the Redeemer may indeed have been only apparent, like the rest of His manifestations on earth; it yet points out to us the way to be made free by the breaking of material bonds. The Christ of Marcion does not rise again, but He goes down into Hades, not to seek the saints of the Old Testament, who are destined to the material joys of the paradise of the Demiurgos, but the unhappy Pagans, the sons of matter, who can be saved only by Him.

According to the Armenian Esnik, an encounter takes place between Christ and the Demiurgos, on the confines of the higher world. The Crucified shuts the mouth of His adversary by confounding him from his own law, which forbids the shedding of innocent blood. He wrests from him the avowal of his inferiority, and delivers those of his subordinates, who have placed their trust in him, leaving the obstinate Jews to the harsh treatment of the Demiurgos. Jesus returns into heaven; thither He draws after Him, by the stern path of asceticism, all who believe in His word; their soul is to break through its material shroud, as the bird breaks the egg, or the ripe ear the straw which encloses it. They are to prepare for the glories of the invisible by renouncing all material pleasures, and breaking all carnal bonds. Marcion imposed on his disciples absolute chastity; he condemned marriage, and required his catechumens to forsake family ties, and to renounce all earthly possessions. So far from fearing reproach and martyrdom, he exulted in both as the sure means of purification. "We are devoted," he says, "to hatred and to grief." It is easy to understand the influence exercised by such a system, for he was full of spiritual energy, of ardent love for Christ, and of a profound conviction of the unquestionable superiority of Christianity over all that had preceded it. His errors, the part he assigned to legendary metaphysics, and to oriental asceticism, gained him many sympathies in an age, the most decided tendencies of which found their satisfaction in him. Thus, in spite of sharp opposition, in spite of the passionate invectives of Tertullian, Marcionism gathered numerous adherents, and constituted a true schismatic church. His influence was felt even in the time of Theodoret, as we learn from his account of the savage old man he met, who washed his face with his own saliva, that he might not borrow even a drop of water from the accursed world of the Demiurgos.

Among the Marcionites we may mention Preps, who insisted upon the existence of the third principle, and Apelles, who had an enthusiastic disciple in a woman named Philomela; he admitted four principles, making a sort of distinct personification of evil. He was as severe as Marcion upon the Old Testament; his docetism, however, appears to have been less pronounced; for, in his view, Christ, in reascending to heaven, gave back the various particles of His flesh to the elements to which they severally belonged. Having made a long sojourn in Alexandria, he blended with the system of Marcion many elements of the doctrine of Valentinus. The fable of Sophia reappears in his notion of the Demiurgos, who sighs after the higher world, of which he has had a glimpse. A system which loses its definite outlines is bending to its fall. The school of Marcion was soon to be dissolved in the ever-heated crucible of fanatic speculation.

MANICHAEISM

Gnosticism, combated during nearly two centuries by the highest Christian genius of the East and West, was so much the more surely vanquished because it encountered a purely moral resistance, which did not dishonour itself by any appeal to force. Nevertheless, it reappeared in Persia, at the close of the third century, under a new form, which betrays the lassitude of the speculative spirit. The logical power displayed is much less than in the systems of Basilides and Valentinus, and the veil of legend, used to cloak the metaphysical construction under brilliant images, and to give it life and colour, has lost all originality. Manichaeism is a translation into Christian language of the ideas which lie at the basis of the religion of Zoroaster, in combination with elements derived from the early heretics. As it touches the soil of Persia, however. Gnosticism springs into new life; if its creations are less bold, they are also less com- plicated, and more popular. Thus this impoverished version restored to it a measure of its forfeited credit, though it never made the same mark as the earlier forms of Gnosticism upon the thought of the Church; it neither became identified with it, nor stimulated it by the necessity of a vigorous resistance. Manichaeism arose in the midst of the religion which had been the clearest exponent of dualism, which had raised that principle to the very border of the spiritual world, but no higher, for it had never left behind the somewhat idealised opposition between darkness and light. We have seen that Christianity had early gathered many adherents in Persia. It had even exerted a deep influence upon the devotees of Zoroaster, who had borrowed from it the weapons with which they opposed it. The new sacred books composed at this period in Iran, bear the plain impress of Christian thought; the idea of redemption, though strangely distorted, occupies an important place. The development given by the Bundehesch to the myths, which concern the heroic conqueror of evil,—who bears the name sometimes of Sosiosch, sometimes of Mithra,—can be explained only by the indirect influence of the new religion. The famous mysteries of Mithra derived from the Gospel their fundamental idea of the renewal of the nature by means of death. The rites celebrated by their votaries were imitated from Baptism and the Lord's Supper. When we find a religion so ancient and so glorious as that of Zoroaster, thus seeking a compromise with a faith so long ignored and despised, we have a sure proof that Christianity must have grown up in juxtaposition with it with amazing rapidity, and must have made itself formidable as a rival. Manichaeism is the counter-part, as it were, of these attempts at fusion; the new religion, ill-understood, and already corrupted in its essence, seeks alliance with the religion of the past, and endeavours to rejuvenate it by baptising it in its own name. It leaves its doctrines untouched, and endeavours only to modify their expression. Mani is still a Magian, while he calls himself a Christian; herein lay the peril and also the inanity of the attempt.

We have two series of documents relating to Mani, the one accredited in the East, the other derived from the historians of Persia. The former consist merely of an account of a supposed public discussion at Cascar, in Mesopotamia, between the heresiarch and a bishop named Archelaus. Not only do they abound in details as to the doctrine of Mani, but they also retrace his history. They suppose him to have had two immediate forerunners. The true founder of the sect is said to have been Scythianus, a rich Arab, well versed in all the sciences of Egypt, which he had made the country of his adoption. He has a disciple, named Terebinthus, who establishes himself in Persia, and edits, in four books, the doctrine of his master. Mani, adopted by the widow of Terebinthus, gives a powerful impetus to the new heresy, enriching it by numerous additions from the sacred books of the Christians. He obtains great credit with the King, Sapores, but is ignominiously driven from the court, after having vainly attempted the miraculous cure of the King's son. He travels over the far East, but finally returns to Persia; he holds sharp controversies with the bishop Archelaus, in the public assemblies. Shamefully defeated, he escapes with difficulty the popular fury, and soon falls under the stroke of the prince whom he had deceived.

This legend, unsupported by any contemporary writer, has no other interest than that of showing clearly the eclectic character of the heresy of Mani, who aimed at nothing higher than a fusion of ideas, derived from all schools. The "Dispute" itself supplies more than one valuable and reliable light upon his doctrine. The oriental version of the origin of Manichaeism has in its favour the surest testimonies borrowed from the national history of Persia, and it commends itself by a great semblance of probability. It is from this source we derive the biography of the founder of Manichaeism.

he dynasty of the Sassanidae had just inaugurated in Persia an era of restoration, which had reinstated the national worship in an honourable position. The Persian historians speak of a sort of solemn council, held by the Magi, under King Artaxerxes, to fix the canon of doctrine. There was naturally much perturbation of mind in a period of universal renovation, in which the blending of peoples and races no longer made it possible for belief to be restricted within the narrow limits of a particular country. Christianity had gathered enough adherents to excite universal opposition, and to teach the world that the time of purely national creeds was irrevocably past. Thus the religion of Zoroaster, in commencing its new career, was constrained to have regard to this character of universality; but to this end, it must needs enlarge its historical basis, and enter into com- bination more or less close with the Gospel. This was the attempt, made in the year 240, by a young Persian named Mani, who seems to have united speculative genius with a brilliant imagination. It has been asserted that he belonged to one of those priestly families, which preserved the pure tradition of the Avesta, as the true sacred fire. It is very possible that he may himself have been one of the Magi, although we have no positive information on this point. His learning was vast; he surpassed all his countrymen. A mathematician, astronomer, musician, and painter, he was a man born to exert a great influence upon his contemporaries. It is doubtful if he ever really connected himself with the Church, though it has been asserted that he for some time exercised the priestly office.

He never recognised the authority of Holy Scripture; he treated this like his own religion, retaining only that which was convenient. In reality, all he borrowed from Christianity was the name of Christ, and the words sin and redemption, which he translated in his own manner, although he preserved the notion of a new and final revelation, destined for the whole human race. In the time and country in which he lived, no system could succeed without the aid of the marvellous. Had he not the example of Zoroaster himself, who had spoken only of visions and ecstasies? A Magian, his contemporary, in repute for his holiness, was held to have been carried up into heaven during many days; there he had beheld, with his own eyes, the mysteries of the unknown world, and had been enabled, by the accounts he brought, to dispel the doubts of his sovereign as to the future life. Mani aspired to play a similar part; he sought to become another Daniel at the Court of Persia; to obtain the royal favour seemed to him the best means for securing the triumph of his doctrine. Thus he soon began to relate his visions and to play the prophet. He set himself forth as pre-eminently the Apostle of Jesus Christ, the true interpreter of His teachings, directly inspired by Heaven. He assumed the name and the office of the Paraclete, a convenient artifice for misrepresenting primitive Christianity, by applying to himself the promises of the Master with reference to the revelations of the Holy Spirit, by which His teachings were to be made plain. With, however, much prudence, he sought to preserve the ideas of Zoroaster under Christian names; he yet laid too bold a hand upon the ancient worship of his country, not to provoke lively opposition. The King, whose favour he had at first won, withdrew it so soon as he saw Mani had formed a sect properly so-called, and that he had sent forth disciples to preach the new doctrine, without confining themselves to the national practices. This kind of innovation is in truth more dangerous than any doctrinal novelties; it needs more courage to attack the customs of a people than its theories, custom being the sensible form, the vesture of the idea which strikes all ages. His death was determined. He retired beyond the eastern frontier of Persia, and went even as far as India; he could not but feel himself drawn towards that land of boundless asceticism and sublime pantheism. Using every means to obtain popularity, he employed his talent as a painter, to cover with brilliant images the temples of the cities through which he passed. Strange apostleship, which, to secure its reception, commenced by patronising the superstitions encountered on its way! At length Mani decided to strike his great blow. He retired into a cave, which, according to the testimony of his enemies, was only a mere grotto, opening out on to a fertile plain, where he found all that was needful for his sustenance. There he pretended to have been honoured with the most ecstatic visions, and to have been caught up into heaven. In this retreat he composed a book which he calls his Gospel, and which he adorns with magnificent symbolical paintings. He brings it back to Persia, as the work of God Himself. Surrounded with the halo of the marvellous, he is received as a new Zoroaster; his disciples rapidly multiply, and he finds great favour with the new King, Hormuz, the son of Sapores, who embraces his doctrine with enthusiasm. He even appears to have provided Mani with a place of refuge, a sort of citadel, where he might hide from the hatred of the Magi, and the opposition of the Christians, for he offended equally the adherents of both the old and the new religion by endeavouring to fuse them in a hybrid alliance which corrupted both. Unhappily for Mani, Hormuz only reigned two years, and Behram, his successor, was the sworn foe of Manichaeism. After tolerating the sect, for prudential reasons, at the commencement of his reign, he soon displayed his true feeling by compelling Mani to accept the challenge of one of those public discussions, the issue of which is certain when a King presides. In the end he caused the death of the heretic, but he could not thus extinguish the heresy, which was too much in accordance with the tendencies of the period, to die with its apostle, and which indeed gained from persecution a moral dignity lacking to it before. The torture of Mani displays extraordinary barbarity; he was flayed alive; his disciples, nevertheless, remained faithful to him, and, scattered far and wide by the persecution, they went everywhere carrying his doctrine, and thus gained for it an importance far outweighing its intrinsic worth. The Christians, alarmed at his influence, said of Mani, that he had opened his mouth like a sepulchre.

The Manichaean system, which we gather from the writings of the immediate disciples as well as in the fragments of the master's book, makes no attempt to cloak the absolute dualism which is its fundamental principle. Mani finds himself under no necessity to observe the ascending scale of fine gradations so skilfully devised by the Gnostic emanatists, and to assign to matter a metaphysical origin. From the commencement, he places the world of mind and the world of matter in direct opposition to each other, and allows them no point of contact. Titus of Bosra says : "Mani, in his anxiety to show that God was in no way the cause of evil, places uncreated evil in opposition to the uncreate divine essence". "I recognise," said Mani, two natures, the one good, the other evil; that which is good is found only in some parts of the world, that which is evil comprehends the whole world. This evil principle, which is at war with God from all eternity, is called sometimes Nature, sometimes Matter, sometimes the Prince of this World, sometimes Satan". The element of disorder, which is in all things, is what Mani calls Matter. Thus he confined himself to stating, broadly and simply, the opposition of Ormuz to Ahrimam—of the kingdom of light to the kingdom of darkness. Light is not in his theory the brilliant symbol of the good and the true; however ethereal and impalpable it is, it still belongs to the inferior world, and it is vain for him to compare it to the spiritual element. Nevertheless he constantly contrasts the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light, as matter with spirit. This kingdom of light is governed by a first principle, who calls himself the Good—the God par excellence, but whose personality is less distinct than that of Ormuz, and loses itself, or is merged in the eternal light, which is essentially diffused; he is identified with every luminous substance. Matter, personified in the same way, in the wicked one or the devil, is normally in a state of confusion, of incoherence, of truly chaotic disorder. It follows its impetuous im- pulses like the sea, the waves of which are uplifted with every stormy wind; its unrestrained forces are in perpetual warfare with each other. In one of its wild and lawless leaps, it catches a glimpse of the region of light, and is strangely enamoured of it. "There was a time," says Titus of Bosra, "when matter moved in chaos. It conceived and brought forth many powers without having itself any intuition of good. But in its struggles, it discerned the light of good, and strove to rise to that region in which it had no right. The darkness, crossing its own limits, entered into contest with the light".

The system is strangely inconsistent throughout; for if matter is in reality the opposite of light, how should it feel for that which is its radical opposite, an attraction which would imply a certain affinity?

The luminous principle, in the calm region where it reigns, dreads this invasion of incoherent matter. In order to repel it, it produces by emanation, a protective power, destined to raise a boundary between the two empires! This protective power is called the Mother of Life, and is nothing else than the creative force. In its turn it gives birth to primeval man; it arms him with the five elements, which are water, light, air, fire, and earth, that he may wage war with chaotic matter. In this gigantic struggle he loses something of his luminous nature. The princes of matter devour a portion of his armour, which is the soul. Thus, when he is released from the tumults of conflict, by being introduced into the higher region of the good God, he leaves behind him particles of light which blend with matter. But that which appears a defeat is in reality a triumph, for it is just by this combination that the principle of good succeeds in tempering and subduing the chaotic forces of matter. Matter was bound, like a wild beast, by the spiritual element it had absorbed, and the result was the production of a compound nature, which prevents the letting loose of the material powers. The divine hero, however, does not consent to suffer the substance which has emanated from him, and which is part of himself, to perish. He seeks to disengage it by degrees, and to reabsorb it in himself. For this purpose he produces a new Aeon, which is the Holy Spirit, the organising power of creation, whose work is to set free the elements of light, buried, as it were, in matter. The Manichaeans represented this entire work of defence and deliverance, by a familiar and expressive comparison. When the hunters will take a fierce lion, they put a kid of the flock in a ditch; its cries attract the savage beast, who falls into the snare, while the kid is released by the shepherd. The devouring lion is raging matter; the ram which allures it and reduces it to impotence, is the luminous element from the higher region; it is a treacherous bait for the great adversary, according to the expression of Theodoret. But it is itself to be finally saved, and this is the object of creation and of history.

We here discern again the fundamental idea of all the Gnostic systems, according to which creation is confounded with redemption. In Manichaeism, however, the redemption is of God Himself, rather than of an inferior being. This luminous substance, which the good God will defend from the invasion of matter, is confounded with His own nature. "The good principle," said the Manichaeans, "created the world, not because he desired to create it, but in order to resist evil". The world, the Cosmos, is only matter disciplined for the defence of the divine essence, for it is only organised by the transfusion of the luminous into the material element; order results from the union, and this combination is the one grand means of quieting the inferior region, which, left to itself, would be a prey to incessant and stormy dissensions. The boundary which divides the luminous from the higher sphere, is not a particular Aeon, which repels, like a rock, the attempt of the powers beneath : it is rather, as in the philosophy of Aristotle, an internal force, a controlling energy, resulting from the skilful combination of contrary elements.

The mother of life and the original man, enact in Manichaeism the part of Sophia in the system of Valentinus, but with less grandeur and poetry. No trace remains of the generous and ardent aspiration of the inferior Aeon, who sighs after complete union with the mysterious principle of her being. We have the mere vulgar necessity of personal defence as the first principle, and an inexplicable defeat of the Aeon, who is its champion. This champion is removed from the dark and stormy scene of the conflict, as is the Sophia of the Valentinians. The portion of his sub- stance, which he leaves behind him, recalls Achamoth, that sorrowful offspring of the pangs of Wisdom. With Valentinus, at least, the redemption of Achamoth is, on the part of the first principle, a work of love, since that unhappy being is distinct from himself, and is born of the rebellion of Sophia. In Manichaeism the good God only redeems Himself, for the luminous substance, which is diffused in the universe, is His own substance; He seeks His own in all beings, and nothing else. Thus the system never rises to the conception of love. It is dark and cold as pantheism.

Let us now follow this work of creation and of redemption through its successive phases. The Holy Spirit, being the organising power which governs the beneficent and tranquillising union of light and darkness, and subjects it to fixed laws, begins by forming the firmament in which the higher powers of nature are joined to the luminous element. The sun and moon are in the highest part of the firmament, and belong to the upper region, or at least these stars are the first intermediaries between it and our world. The luminous element is found at every step of the scale of beings; it is even present in the plant. It suffers acutely in being thus made subject to material bonds. This represents, according to a bold and poetic image of the Manicheans, the universal crucifixion of the Eternal Christ, whom they identify with the divine and luminous principle. "What," says St. Augustine, "is that cross of light of which the Manichaeans speak? The members of God, say they, are scattered throughout the whole world, engaged in the universal conflict. They are in the stars, in herbs, in fruits. To tear up the soil by the ploughshare is to wound the members of God ; so also is it to pull up a vegetable or gather a fruit. Jesus Christ is thus crucified in the whole world". The development of life in the world, rising from kingdom to kingdom, is a progressive enfranchisement of the divine element. Thus, only to speak of the vegetable kingdom; it takes up a portion of the soil with its roots, then transforms itself into leaf and flower, and diffuses itself in the air, returning to its source in the sphere of light. Animal life appears, in a sense, inferior to vegetable, because it is subject to the law of reproduction; thus Mani made it to proceed directly from the powers of darkness. The ardent rays of the sun hasten the liberation of the divine element from the bosom of earth. The aim of the good principle is to deliver the soul from the fetters of evil, and to lead it to exhale itself in some way from the heart of matter.

The Manichaeans had a new version of the fable of the giant Atlas; they pretended that a powerful giant, the son of matter, carried the world upon his shoulders, and that earthquakes were caused by his movements. They had a strange explanation of the creation of man. According to them, the maleficent powers of matter were greatly alarmed at seeing to what an extent natural life, in its constant evolution, was losing. all the divine germs contained in it. Anxious to retain these germs, that they might not fall back into a state of chaos, they produced beings who bore the impress of their spiritual nature. Satan, who is the king of these ephemeral creations, then destroyed them in order to gather together in one all these luminous particles. This being, who thus concentrates the life of the world, and who is at once soul and body, is man. His soul is the concentration of the luminous elements scattered abroad in the universal life. His body is the material element, but is subdued and kept in subjection by the union with the spiritual.

According to another Manichaean tradition, the powers of matter, after, having seen in vision the primeval man, who was translated into the region of light, attempted to create a being in his likeness, and thus produced Adam, the father of our race. But it is found in the end that the demons have miscalculated, and that in concentrating the divine life in a being who is the image of the world—a complete microcosm—they have accelerated that sort of evaporation of the light, after which there will remain only the dead body of the universe, or chaotic matter.

The divine work will consist in withdrawing man from the power of his creator, who is no other than the demon.

The influence of the Gnostic sect of the Ophites is plainly recognisable in this part of the system. The fall in Eden is the starting-point of the restoration, since it breaks the yoke of the powers of darkness, personified in the God of creation. By violating their command, and gathering the fruit of knowledge, man lays the foundation of his liberty.

The tree of knowledge of good and evil is called Jesus. Is it not in truth the emblem of salvation, since it gives the knowledge which saves the soul? Unhappily Eve, under the influence of the demons, leads Adam astray, and wins him over to a life of sensual indulgence. This surrender to the senses is his true fall. The Manichaeans assumed towards the Old Testament the attitude of extreme Gnosticism. They used violent animadversions against the God of Israel and His law, which they declared to be implacable; they saw in His prophets, organs of the spirit of darkness. The "Dispute of Archelaus" shows that this was one of the fundamental points of their system. According to Photius, Agapius, the faithful disciple of Mani, openly mocked at Moses and the prophets, and ascribed to the power of evil all that was said or done under the first covenant.

The Manichaeans explained the death of man by a strange fable, which was a new distortion of the myth of Sophia. They asserted that the powers of darkness, which dwelt in the firmament, once saw the image of the higher life appearing upon the features of a virgin of celestial beauty. They were at once filled with ardent love for her, and in their painful and impotent efforts to reach her, their sweat and tears fell to the ground, and engendered plagues and mortal sicknesses. Death thus originated in a fervent aspiration baffled. We can attach no importance to this incoherent legend. It is certain that in the view of the Manichaeans, death is to man the liberation of the spiritual part, which is carried away by the moon, as by a heavenly vessel, up to the regions of eternal and unclouded light. The waxing of the moon corresponds with the moment when it opens to receive emancipated souls; its waning marks the time when it has deposited its sacred burden safe in the heavenly haven.

Without recognising moral freedom, Mani requires man to do battle with the material element which lives in him, and to strengthen his spiritual nature. He admits, like other Gnostics, a certain predetermination of nature, which establishes the hierarchy of souls. This is apparent from the terms in which he addresses himself to a female disciple, in whom he recognises the offspring of a divine race.

Salvation, in this system, can only consist in deliverance from the bonds of matter : it is accomplished at the death of every man, by the extinction of all corporeal life. We are to prepare ourselves for it, by a knowledge of the true principles and by asceticism. Mani has expressed very clearly this purely intellectual conception of salvation, in a fragment of a letter which St. Augustine has preserved. "Thou hast been inundated with light," he writes to an adept of his sect, " by learning to know what thou wast originally, from what class of beings thou dost emanate, by understanding that which mingles itself with all bodies, with all substances, and diffuses itself through all species. Just as souls are born of other souls, so does the bodily element proceed from the body. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Spirit is the soul which proceeds from the soul, as the flesh from the flesh."

When redemption is once confounded with the mere evolution of creation, the part of the Saviour necessarily becomes insignificant. He comes simply to reveal to us the true idea of things, and to stimulate us to saintly self-mortifications; He is, like Mithra, the spirit of the sun, the primary representative of the luminous principle; He is that very primeval man, who entered into conflict with darkness, and who was separate from all material life; His birth and His death alike are but semblances without reality, and His body itself is a phantom.

"The nature of light," says Mani, ''being simple and true, it could not enter into contact with the material essence". In Jesus, the light took the form of flesh, becoming as it were its impalpable shadow, but incapable of suffering, for it would be absurd to speak of the crucifixion of the shadow of the flesh. The Son of light revealed His essence upon the Mount of Transfiguration. He appeared in human form without being man; He never knew the humiliation of human birth. St. Augustine declares in his "Confessions", that at the time when he was a Manichaean, he regarded Jesus only as the son of the sun. The world is destined gradually to lose all that it contains of the divine; at the end of time the primeval man will appear; matter will then be only an inert mass consumed by fire, and the souls which shall have lost their divine substance by succumbing to the flesh, will be confounded with it, while the ascetic saints will triumph in the fulness of divine light. This cannot be the final utterance of the system, for matter, as it had no beginning, cannot consistently have any end. We may suppose then that the same evolution will recommence, and that this succession of mythical facts represents the successive phases, or to speak more correctly, the permanent laws, of universal life.

It is certain that the doctrine of metempsychosis entered into the Manichaean theory; the souls which had not preserved their purity saw awaiting them a series of ordeals through which they were to attain final deliverance.

The notion of moral freedom, and the idea of providence, were wholly absent from this grossly dualistic system.

Mani supported his doctrine by an exegesis which carried the arbitrary to the furthest limits. We know that he rejected without scruple the whole of the Old Testament. In the New, he did not allow himself to be fettered by anything in the letter; was he not the Paraclete, the depositary of the higher and final revelations? He adopted Christian words, while he totally altered their meaning. The sect made use of several apocryphal writings, which it interpreted so as to support its own tenets.

Morality was with the Manichaeans identical with asceticism. They professed contempt for a life of laborious industry, and, in this respect, diverged from the oldest traditions of the "Avesta," which regarded fruitful toil in every department as the holy work of Ormuz. The disciple of Mani was to pass through material life without touching anything that enhanced or embellished existence. ' When they are about to eat bread," says Epiphanius, "they first pray and pronounce these words : 'I have not gathered in nor ground the grain, neither have I sent it to the mill. Another has done these things, and has brought thee to me. I eat thee without reproaches, for he who reaps shall himself be reaped, and he who sends corn to the mill shall himself be ground to powder". It was not possible to express more clearly the interdiction of all work, lest unwitting injury should be done to the luminous particles diffused throughout the material universe.

The sect had two stages of initiation. The mere hearers were not admitted to the sacred mysteries, and might continue their common life. The elect, on the contrary, broke all the bonds of society and of marriage, gave themselves up to macerations of the body, and submitted to three rites, which were the seal of perfectness. The sign of the mouth indicated pureness of language and abstinence from all animal food; the sign of the hand implied a renunciation of all manual labour, which might enrich and adorn an accursed world; and, lastly, the sign of the bosom—signaculum sinus—was a vow of perpetual chastity.

The Manichaeans regarded baptism as a purification of the defilements of material birth; it was, however, only in exceptional use among them. They set apart the Sabbath for fasting. Their great festival was the anniversary of the death of Mani, which they celebrated by a sort of mystic passover. A splendid seat, covered with precious fabrics, was set up in the midst of the building in which they assembled; this was to bring to mind the teaching of the master and the doctrine of deliverance which he had preached. The Manichaeans had no temples, properly so called; prayer and the singing of hymns constituted a great part of their worship. Their hymns, judging by the fragments which have come down to us, consisted chiefly of brilliant descriptions of the abode of light and of its inhabitants, the children of the sun.

Such is this system, which exerted a far more important influence than is accounted for by its logical or religious value. It presents, with a degree of clearness which must have contributed to its success, the residue of all the speculative errors, which had from the first attempted to transform Christianity. It is evident that its triumph would have led to a restoration of Persian dualism, pure and simple, which would not have differed much from the mysteries of Mithra, and that the Pagan idea, in its most essential element—the glorification of nature—would have been emphatically reasserted by its means. We may observe, in conclusion, that there is no more decisive refutation of Gnosticism, than the reductio ab absurdum which results from its own free development.

JUDAISING HERESY IN THE SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES.

I. The Elkesaites and the Ebionites

While nothing could be more untrue to fact than to identify primitive Christianity with Judaism, and to regard as simple progress that which was in reality a vast revolution, it is certain that very close bonds attached the new religion to that of the Old Testament, by which it had been initiated and proclaimed. These bonds might be either broken altogether, or clenched so tightly as to arrest all further development, either error being fraught with fatal consequences. While Gnosticism tends to place a deep gulf between the two Testaments, Judaising heresy seeks to confound them; but even in its reactionary movement against Gnosticism, it comes under its influence, and produces a strangely deformed and perverted Judaism, upon which has passed the blasting, withering breath of oriental dualism.

From the times of the Apostles, there are three distinctly-marked sections in the Judeo-Christian community. The first remains closely attached to the nucleus of apostolic Christianity; it is, indeed, an important branch of it, and can claim the highest antiquity, for it dates from the upper chamber at Jerusalem; its representative and head was James, the brother of the Lord, and it continued invariably faithful to the wise and conciliatory decisions of the Council of Jerusalem. It did not cease to live in perfect harmony with that freer section known as the Pauline party, which, after all, represented more faithfully the thought of Christ, by putting the new wine into a new vessel. The second type of Judaeo-Christianity is the narrow and intractable Pharisaic school, which was eager to transfer to the Church all the practices and prejudices of Judaism, making circumcision a necessary condition of salvation, and endeavouring to bring all the converts from paganism into bondage under legal forms. St. Paul had no more determined and deadly enemies than these, either in Galatia or in Greece.

The third party was the eclectic school, which, according to the current tendency of the time, mingled oriental with Jewish ideas. At Corinth, as in Crete, at Colosse and at Ephesus, the great Apostle had to contend strenuously against a false spiritualism, which identified evil with matter, forbade marriage, and rejected the resurrection of the body, denying first the resurrection of Jesus Himself. Cerinthus was the fullest exponent of this bastard Judaism, which united and combined the gravest errors of the time; and we have seen how St. John had this in view in almost all his writings, because it was the gravest danger then threatening the Church.

These three schools of Judaeo-Christianity reappeared in the second century, but strangely modified by the course of events. The destruction of Jerusalem made a still more important revolution in the religious than in the political sphere. Moderate Judaeo-Christianity saw in the overthrow of the Temple, the condemnation of the ancient worship, and began accordingly to seek fusion with the Church composed of Gentile converts. This coalescent movement, which commenced at Pella, where the Christians had taken refuge, went on much more rapidly during the short and violent reign of Barcocheba, who shed in floods the blood of those who were called Nazarenes, and who excited, more even than the Romans, the animosity of the Jewish fanatics. The eclectic faction of Judaeo-Christianity only escaped proscription by an adherence to the synagogue, which was equivalent to a rupture with the Church. This rupture was inevitable when, after the building of Aelia Capitolina by Adrian, upon the very site of Jerusalem, an imperial decree forbade any adherents of Judaism to dwell in a city, all the local associations of which would have been incitements to revolt. Thus, the Church which quickly established itself in the new city, was composed, in great part, of Christian converts from paganism; to these a considerable number of Christians previously belonging to the Judaising party, attracted by the love of country, joined themselves, abandoning the observance of their ancient worship.

The Jewish Christians, who remained faithful to their national customs, no longer had, in the eyes of the Church, the prestige of representing the great tradition of Palestine, since they no longer inhabited sacred soil; moreover, they could no more appeal to the decrees of the Council of Jerusalem, since the destruction of the Temple had in fact abrogated them, rendering impossible the greater part of the observances of the ceremonial law, and in particular all that related to the sacrifices. To seek to perpetuate the practice of Judaism under such circumstances, was to transform a transitional measure into a permanent and universal principle. In this way a conflict became inevitable, and observances which had been legitimate a few years before, were transmuted by degrees into positive heresy. The moderate school of Judaeo-Christianity was not proscribed, however, till much later, at the time when the union of the Church and the Empire, and the decisions of the first great Councils, superseded liberty by uniformity. The fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries confounded, in one common sentence of reprobation, all the sections of Judaeo-Christianity, taking no account of their differences, however important. It was not so in the second and third centuries : moderate Judaeo-Christianity was still in existence in the time of Justin Martyr, who carefully distinguished it from the second school, which we have called the Pharisaic. If he thought it his own duty to receive circumcision, he nevertheless acknowledged that no such observance was obligatory on the converts from paganism, and, consequently, that it was not indispensable to salvation. Justin declares plainly that the Judaeo-Christian of this school has his part in eternal life as well as other believers. He says : "He will be saved, if he does not compel Gentiles by birth, who have been circumcised in heart, to observe the Mosaic law". He speaks differently of the Judaisers, who place all the legal observances above the Gospel. "As for the Jews," says Justin, "who, professing to believe in Christ, would yet compel the converts from paganism to adhere to the whole law of Moses, under pain of perdition, I cannot recognise them as belonging to the Church".

The name of Nazarenes was given to the moderate Judaeo-Christians, but they gradually became confounded with the second school, that from which Justin had distinguished them, and which was characterised by its exclusive Judaism. This, in its turn, was, to a large extent, absorbed in the third school, for the reasons we have indicated. Epiphanius, however, gives it a separate place, side by side, with the half-Gnostic Ebionites of the ''Clementines"; it preserved its distinctness, like a little streamlet by the side of a broad current, owing to its peculiar and strongly-marked colour. It involved the Nazarenes in its own condemnation; so that, in the time of Irenaeus, moderate Judaism, which, for a long time, had been regarded as accredited by the Jerusalem Council, ceased to occupy any place in the spot which had been the nursery of the Church. That which tended most to alienate the Church from Judaeo-Christianity, was its categorical repudiation of the divinity of Jesus Christ. It held very extreme millenarian views, and of the Gospels accepted only that of Matthew in the Hebrew text.

The third school—that which is imbued with oriental Gnosticism— excites far more attention, and provokes far more discussion, than the other two sections of Judaeo-Christianity, because it is not a mere phantom of the past, reviving an old controversy virtually closed by St. Paul, and at this time practically unimportant. It was in harmony with the spirit of the time, and shared in the favour so readily accorded in that day to everything bearing the impress of theosophy. It arose first in the same countries which had given birth to Essenism, on the grandly desolate shores of the Dead Sea, where everything speaks of sadness and the curse;—in that desert of Judaea, which, in the language of a great writer, seems to have kept solemn silence ever since it heard the voice of Jehovah. The strange and melancholy sect which had separated from official Mosaism, under the same sense of the overwhelming pressure of existence, which in India produced the fanatic asceticism of the Buddhists, naturally received a fresh impulse, after the terrible calamities of the Roman Conquest. These anchorites alone remained unharmed in the midst of so many reeking ruins, for having already abandoned animal sacrifices, they lost nothing by the abolition of the Levitical worship. Had they not still the most fitting altar for the mystic offerings of their prayers in that land of death, where nature, barren and joyless, seems herself the sternest of ascetic votaries, on the borders of those gloomy regions, where, according to the dreams of the Buddhists, all tone, colour, form, everything that has life in it, dies away? The excited Judaeo-Christians, who took refuge in the wilds of Judaea, would inevitably assimilate with all that remained of Essenism; this was the only bond by which they could yet attach themselves to Judaism, since they found in the practices of this party a substitute for temple and altar. From this union sprang a singular sect, called the Elkesaites, who, in their turn, were to give birth to Gnostic Ebionitism.

The name Elkesaites was derived from the supposed founder of the sect, who, according to vague traditions, received, in the third year of Trajan's reign, a mysterious book, containing the true doctrine. This book was said to have been committed to him by a gigantic angel, accompanied by a woman, whose stature in like manner surpassed all ordinary proportions. The angel is intended for the Son of God, the woman for the Holy Spirit. Evidently, we have in this legend a rough outline of the dualism which forms the basis of Gnosticism, and which we shall find fully developed in the ''Clementines".

The person of Elxai belongs itself to metaphysical mythology. The name indeed signifies hidden power, and is made symbolical of the mysterious influence of the Divinity, or the Holy Spirit, from whom all revelation proceeds.The doctrine of the Elkesaites is still in an indistinct and undeveloped state. Oriental Gnosticism and Jewish or Christian elements have not yet become thoroughly amalgamated with it. From Gnosticism is borrowed the conception of a great masculine and feminine duality, placed at the zenith of the universe. The prohibition of animal food is also derived from Oriental asceticism. The celebration of baptism reveals the influence of Christianity, but this rite loses all moral significance; it becomes a magical ceremony, which purifies from all sin, even the greatest. "O ye who have committed adultery!" say the adherents of this sect, "or who have prophesied falsely, if you will be converted and receive the remission of sins, you will obtain peace, and your lot will be with the just, if, after having heard our books, you plunge into the water, clothed in all your garments." This baptism is not merely administered in the name of the Father and the Son, it is further accompanied with the invocation of seven witnesses, which are heaven, the water, holy spirits, the angels of prayer, oil, salt, and earth. Clearly these seven spirits are the equivalent of the Holy Spirit, whose name was invoked, after that of the Father and the Son, in the ordinary baptismal formula. It follows that the elements of the world form part of the Deity, and we are thus brought back to Oriental naturalism. The oil and the salt point to the communion as it was observed in this sect. Christ is only a mere man. He is nevertheless born of a virgin, but He has appeared many times in history under various forms. It is impossible to form any clear idea of His mission, unless He is one of the manifestations of the giant-angel, who brought the book of revelation. Probably the sect shared in the anthropomorphic ideas of the Jewish mysteries, and supposed a complete resemblance between man and the Son of God. The Jewish impress is seen in the maintenance of cir- cumcision and of legal observances, so far at least as they were compatible with the condition of things after the overthrow of the Temple. Marriage was held in high esteem. The sect was naturally addicted to the chimeras of astrology and magic. It made no pretension to Christian heroism, for it attached no importance to apostasy. § Incoherent as it was, this doctrine lived for a considerable length of time, and endeavoured to disseminate itself beyond its obscure nursery, for Origen met one of its missionaries at Cesarea in 231, and St. Hippolytus found another in Rome at the commencement of the third century.

Gnostic Ebionitism, which had its origin in the sect of the Elkesaites, carries the Oriental and ascetic tendency to its furthest limits. It gives it an elaborate and piquant form, well adapted to please sickly imaginations, and minds greedy of empty speculations. The very name of this sect bespeaks its character. Some have sought to trace in it the name of its founder, but Ebio, like Elxai, can be found in the nimbus of legend alone. The meaning of the term is plain. In Hebrew it signifies poor. The Ebionites were then called the poor, not, as has been asserted, on account of the poverty of their conception of Christ, whom they regarded as a mere man, but because they pretended to realise the ideal of the beatitudes, that poverty of spirit, that absolute renunciation of all things, which was inseparable in their view from the most exaggerated asceticism. The name may have been sometimes given in Palestine to all the Christians indiscriminately, but after the rupture of the exclusive Judaeo-Christians with the Church, it was applied to the latter only, and perhaps also by some of the Fathers to the Nazarenes, a sect which might easily be confounded by the ill-informed observer with those of more pronounced opinions. We shall indicate the general features of the Ebionite doctrine before its more learned elaboration in the "Clementines."

According to Irenaeus and Hippolytus, its adherents admitted that the world had been created by God. They thus dispensed with the intermediary link of the Demiurgus, but made no true return to Christian theism, as is clear from the pantheism of the "Clementines." They were agreed as to the necessity of circumcision, and the observance of the law. St. Paul was the object of their animadversion, and they treated him as an apostate. They formally denied the divinity of Jesus Christ, and regarded Him as a mere man, born of Joseph and Mary. His perfect piety had raised Him to the high dignity He had attained, while there was no derogation of the law of Moses. Each one of His disciples, therefore, by following in His footsteps, might hope to become in his turn a Christ.

According to the testimony of Origen, some of the Ebionites admitted the supernatural birth of Jesus, but without paying Him homage as the Son of God. It is probable that Epiphanius has applied to them indiscriminately the system of the "Clementines." We must receive, therefore, with much reservation, that which he attributes to the sect as a whole. It cannot be denied, however, that the theosophic development assumed by it was in harmony with its original tendency. It is certain that the Ebionites very early delighted in the elaborate metaphysical theories of Essenism, and entered into speculations as to the relations between the world and God. In all likelihood the transcendental mysticism of Judaism, which already contained the germs of the Kabbala, exerted a great influence over them. They derived from it the notion of the ideal and eternal man,—that Adam Cadmon, who is the very representative of God.

II. The Clementines.

The development of the great Gnostic systems gave a powerful impulse to Ebionitism. The visions of the Elkesaites tended in the same direction, and under these combined influences there was produced an entire literature, half-Romanesque, half-metaphysical, of which we have the oldest and most authentic expression in the "Clementine Homilies," written about the year 150,—not at Rome, as the Tubingen school has asserted, but in Oriental Syria, which had become the meeting-point of Jewish ideas with the phantasmagoria of Gnosticism. Let us attempt to give an idea of this singular book before we endeavour to unfold the system it contains, and to mark the place it occupies in the history of heresies.

The "Homilies" are prefaced by a letter from Peter to James, the Lord's brother, notifying him of the despatch of the genuine account of his disputes with Simon Magus, and urging him to transmit his teaching only to intimate disciples, and thus to found a secret tradition. This letter is followed by the attestation that all had really transpired as said by the Apostle. Then comes an epistle from Clement of Rome to James, announcing the death of Peter, and containing his dying wish for the transmission of his charge to Clement.

These three documents have, as we shall see presently, a very important bearing on the ecclesiastical question, for, in spite of their heretical origin, they reveal a sacerdotal vein of thought, which found only too susceptible a medium in the Church. The Homilies themselves turn upon the marvellous incidents of the meeting between Clement and Peter, and upon the memorable dispute between the Apostle and Simon Magus.

The commencement of the book is very fine. It describes eloquently the sufferings of Clement, when, consumed with the thirst for truth, he went about seeking it at the doors of all the schools, till at Alexandria he met Barnabas, who led him to St. Peter in Palestine. Arrived at Caesarea, he was speedily convinced by the Apostle, who proposes to him that he shall assist at the great public controversies which are about to take place between himself and the leader of heresy—the famous Simon of Samaria.

Peter employs the time gained by the adjournment of this debate, to instruct Clement in the nature of true prophecy, on the authority of the Scriptures, and on the errors which are blended with truth in the sacred books. The "Clementines" contain two great controversies between the Apostle and the heretic, the one at Caesarea, which lasts three days and turns mainly upon the interpretation of the Bible; the other at Laodicea, upon lying visions, upon the supreme God, and the nature of good. In the interval, other discussions on Paganism, on astrology, and on the devil, are raised by various speakers. All these discussions are held in the different towns where Peter is represented as carrying on his apostolic mission, founding Churches, baptising converts, appointing bishops, and ever in pursuit of Simon, who—worthy founder of Gnosticism—seems, like his doctrines, perpetually to elude the seeker. In these wanderings, Clement meets with his parents, of whom he had long lost all traces; his mother receives holy baptism at Laodicea; his brothers were already among Peter's disciples, though he had not known it His father offers more resistance. Clement is himself the subject of a very singular adventure. Simon, by his sorceries, has given him an extraordinary resemblance to himself; but he is caught in his own snare, for Peter sends the false Simon to Antioch, where heresy had gained much ground, to make a sort of public abjuration, which all the finesses ascribe to the magician himself. The apostle of the "Clementines" does not scruple thus to use a pious fraud.

It is in this framework, adorned not unskilfully according to the taste of the time, that the system of Ebionite-Gnosticism unfolds its endless intricacies. That which first of all impresses the reader is a certain expansion of Judaism. Just as Paganism, before becoming extinct, endeavoured to renew its youth by borrowing from Christianity, in the mysteries of Mithra for example, so the Judaising tendency strives to catch the Gospel character of universality. It will abate nothing in reality from its pretensions, but it will cloak them under a Christian garb. Intractable in substance, it is ready to make concessions in form, and does not hesitate to substitute baptism for circumcision, doubtless under the influence of the sect of the Elkesaites. But it rejects, none the less, all that constitutes the originality of the new religion, the doctrine of grace in particular, in order to substitute for it a legal system. Thus it directs its most severe assaults against the great Apostle of the Gentiles, who is evidently intended in Simon Magus. In fact, Peter in the seventeenth Homily, occupies exactly the stand-point taken by those Judaising teachers of Corinth and Galatia, who refused to Paul the title of apostle, on the ground that he had not seen Jesus Christ with his own eyes in the days of His flesh, and could appeal only to the vision on the road to Damascus. ''Thou dost exalt thyself," says Simon to Peter, "affirming that thou hast a true understanding of the words of the Master, because thou hast seen Him with thine eyes, and heard Him with thine ears, and that he who has only had a vision or a dream cannot have the same assurance. But thou dost err, for it is not enough to have heard any one in order to have a full assurance. It may be asked if one who presents himself to us in a human form may not deceive us? A vision, on the contrary, is a direct revelation of the Deity". " He who believes in a vision, or in an apparition, or a dream," replies the Apostle, ''is sure of nothing, for it may be he has only seen a demon or a lying spirit, which feigns to be that it is not."

It is moreover obvious that Simon Magus in many respects recalls Marcion, for the "Clementines" are directed essentially against his system; but as Marcion claims to be a disciple of St. Paul, his doctrine is virtually assailed in the person of the great Apostle. He is, then, constantly the object of Peter's attacks.

The fundamental principle of the "Clementines" is the identity of Christianity with Judaism. There is only one Divine religion, ever the same in substance, which from Adam to Jesus has been perpetuated in the world. "Both doctrines," says Peter, "are one. God accepts alike the believer in either". This religion has had as its organs the great prophets, whose testimony is preserved in Holy Scripture, but not uncorruptedly, for false prophecy, always at war with the true, has found means to introduce lying oracles into the Book of God. It cannot, therefore, be accepted without reserve. We must be able to distinguish between error and truth. The Scriptures contain much that is false about God. Paganism is absolutely bad. It had no conception whatever of the Deity, and lost itself in darkness. Nevertheless, by a strange inconsistency, a certain sense of things divine is accorded to the human soul. It can discern and hail the true divine prophecy by a rapid and spontaneous intuition. "Truth," says Peter, " is deposited in germ in our heart".

The "Clementines" bear the impress of the purely intellectual character of Gnosticism. Religion is only teaching, prophecy, never redemption; it is a divine word, not a divine work. Jesus Christ is a teacher. He is the true Prophet, not a Saviour. Truth can only be found by the true prophet of truth. The true prophet is he who knows all things and all thoughts, and who is without sin. He came to dissipate the dark clouds which hung about His house, and to fill it with the pure light of day, not to rebuild it. His perfect holiness is admitted, but He is none the less shorn of His divinity. He Himself is said to have declined this high dignity, "The Lord did not set Himself forth as God". He is not, however, a man like any other man. He has appeared on various occasions in history under different names. He is the ideal man, the primeval man, realising perfectly the image of God, the Adam of Paradise, who was the great manifestation of true prophecy, which is identical with spiritual power, or the Son of God. This true prophecy was manifested first partially by Moses, then completely in Jesus, who is its most perfect representative since Adam, or rather who is Adam himself. We quote the very text of the *Clementines : "Piety is evidenced pre-eminently in the recognition of the Spirit of Christ in the man formed by God at the commencement of this economy. Under various forms and names, He has come down through all the ages, till at length He obtains repose, and receives the anointing of the Divine love, in recompense for the work which He has accomplished. He it is who has been the universal ruler".

This identification of a slightly Christianised Judaism with ideal humanity, gave the basis for the universality of the "Clementines", without making any real concession to the essential principles of the Gospel. Salvation was always connected with legal observances. The substitution of baptism for circumcision was only a change of form. The Christian sacrament was celebrated on purely Jewish principles, since it incorporated the convert with the people of God by an outward act in the same way as circumcision. The notion of pardon and of justifying faith was merged in that of works. "God has granted both to the Hebrews and to the Gentiles," says Peter, in the Clementines, "the faculty of believing in the masters of truth. Each has been able by his own judgment to perform good works, and the recompense is in justice awarded to the doers. They would have had no need either of Moses or of Jesus Christ, if they had been willing themselves to be guided by their own reason". There could be no more explicit denial of the fall, and the necessity of redemption. It is always a frigid and false pharisaic virtue, which claims heaven as its reward, while allowing that the pains of the other life will cover the arrears of the debt. Chastisement is enough to effect deliverance. Devotion to vain observances will outweigh the eternal claims of morality. Religion is a matter of rites and ceremonies; only the necessities of the time and the influence of Essenism have modified the ritual. Ablutions take the place of sacrifices, but the principle remains the same. It is still the sort of bargaining which will purchase, not accept, the gifts of God.

"The Divine religion," we read in the 'Clementines, "consists in these points : to worship God alone, to believe only in the prophet of the truth, to receive baptism for the forgiveness of sins, to be thus born again in the purifying stream of saving water; to abstain from the table of demons,—that is to say, from meats offered to idols, from beasts strangled or slain by other beasts, or still holding the blood; to live in purity, and to perform ablutions after the sexual relations. Women are bound to observe carefully the purifications prescribed by the law. All are to be sober, to do good, to avoid injustice, to look for life eternal from the Almighty God, and to obtain His favour by incessant prayers and supplications".

Charity and forgiveness of sins find no place in this meagre morality.

The "Clementines" thus openly assail the doctrine of St. Paul, as well as the exaggerated interpretation put upon it by Marcion in his vehement opposition to Judaism. The speculative part of the system is especially directed against the positive dualism of the famous Gnostic.

The ''Clementines" endeavour to get rid of the Demiurgos, and to formulate a rigid monotheism. They do not succeed, because they thus abandon the moral ground, and have recourse to theosophy, to explain the origin of evil. The cardinal point of the "Clementines" is the unity of God. "Know before all things that His power is shared with none". This one God bears no resemblance to the bottomless abyss of the Valentinians, nor to the ineffable One of Philo. He has a bodily form, and as all form must have its limitation, He is enclosed in the vast void as in His dwelling-place. He is the heart of the universe, from which all proceeds, to which all returns. If the "Clementines" insist upon this strange theory of the form of God, it is to establish one of their favourite doctrines the perfect resemblance of man to his Creator. It is again for the same reason that the Divine wisdom, which is, as it were, the productive virtue of the Most High,— "His creative hand opened to give birth to universal life"—is assimilated to the female element. Thus God, like the first man, contains in Himself the male and female element. This is the basis of that law of duality which applies to the whole universe, only in God it does not destroy the essential and eternal unity. That Sophia, who is also called the child of God, is to God that which Eve was to Adam. She evidently represents the inferior element, designated in ordinary Gnosticism under the name of the Demiurgos, and we thus find invincible dualism carried even into this exalted sphere of the Divine unity. By an inconsistency, which would be strange in a more logical system, this Divine wisdom, which is the inferior element in God, becomes the good element in the world. This is easy to comprehend. The Divine wisdom, in so far as it is the direct cause of the material creation, may be an inferior element compared to the one God, but is none the less superior to matter, as the pure ideal is above its actual realisation. Wisdom becomes the right hand of God, while the prince of the material world, who is its personification, is His left hand. He is called Satan, or the Devil. Thus we find in creation the great law of dualities. It may be traced through all orders of existences, always giving the preference to good over evil till the creation of man, who is the point of junction of the two series, and who inaugurates the reverse order, for in the human sphere evil always takes precedence of good.

Let us look more closely into the mode of the world's creation. The Sophia brings into operation the eternal matter, which is before virtually in existence, and is, as it were, the body of God. This matter is essentially flexible and susceptible of any transformation, so that, under the action of the Divine breath of the Sophia, the air is changed into water, and the water again, becoming solidified, is changed into stone and earth; the stones striking together produce fire. "Did not God change the rod of Moses into a serpent, that is to say, into an animated being, which subsequently became a rod again? Did not that same rod turn the water of the Nile into blood, and then the blood again to water? Thus is it with man; the spirit breathed into the dust made it flesh, which returns to dust again". The four elements, which are the dry, the moist, air, and fire, are neuter or indifferent in a moral point of view, being neither good nor bad at the time of their production. They are endowed, however, with a kind of spontaneity or liberty; they combine at will, and from this combination results the devil, called also the prince of this world. He is the soul of this great body of the universe. He represents justice, while the Sophia represents love; he is the king of the present world, while the Sophia reigns over the world to come. The dualities succeed each other in the order indicated : earth, then heaven ; day, then night. Adam is made in the image of God. He is His living representative, the great prophet of the truth, but he contains in himself the female element, or Eve, which is false prophecy. Human history is divided between the true prophecy and the false. Both are found in Holy Scripture, on which we are to exercise the elective faculty. The male element, the element of the good and true, appears in the true Jewish prophecy, and is concentrated in Jesus, the prophet by pre-eminence. The female and evil element, which has corrupted the sacred book itself, has its full development in Paganism.

Idolatry was brought to earth by the fallen angels changed into demons; their coming to earth was designed for a good end, namely, to chastise the ingratitude of men towards God, by impelling those who had been guilty of it to the most shameless passions, and inflicting on them the deepest dishonour. To gratify their covetousness, they had changed themselves into diamonds and all sorts of precious stones. Finally, they allowed themselves to be inflamed with the basest desires. Enamoured of female beauty they fell into various adulteries, which gave birth to giants. These, gratifying by vast massacres their bloodthirsty souls, caused malarious vapours to arise from the sodden soil, which produced sicknesses. The demons led mankind into idolatry, and taught man the arts of magic.

This absurd legend was designed to pour contempt upon the pagan nations. Since the time of Christ the two conflicting dominions are still in active opposition. The present age, the world with its shows and seductions, leads astray the majority of men. The true disciples of Jesus are the humble and the poor, who live for the age to come, under the guidance of eternal wisdom, and practising all the prescribed ordinances.

If the "Clementines" seem at first to recognise the free-will of man, they soon withdraw the concession, for according to the system, evil no less than good is in conformity with the will of God. He uses His left as well as His right hand, and is as adorable when He smites and punishes as when He blesses and rewards. The devil, who thus represents justice, is His servant in a manner. He carries out His designs no less than the Sophia. The false prophecy is as necessary as the true. We are surprised, after such declarations, to hear of the punishment of the wicked, but it is only a seeming punishment, for hell is the paradise of the demon, who finds there an abode in harmony with his nature. As for the good, they are to be absorbed in God, "as the vapours of the mountain are absorbed by the sun".

Other passages suggest the idea that the entire visible universe will be lost in the Divine unity, the final centre of eternal repose, as it was the focus from which all life proceeded.

It is evident that this attempt to resolve Gnosticism into an idealised Judaism is not successful. The "Clementines" cannot get rid of the Demiurgos; their attempt to merge it in God is vain. It is still present as the eternal limitation of the Divine unity and goodness. By a bold stroke they proclaim that evil is only a name, and that in substance it is identical with good; but a change of appellation is not a change of essence. Evil remains no less evil to the conscience. The claim of this complex system to respect lies in its very contradictions, in that assertion of liberty, which is absurd from the logical point of view, but which is the true voice of conscience. The system resolves itself none the less into an idealistic pantheism, which only moderates the excesses of asceticism by virtue of its Jewish origin. A doctrine born in the land of the patriarchs could not defame marriage like an Indian sect. Gnostic dualism, though far from being vanquished by Ebionitism, reappears under a new disguise in the "Clementines," and both schools are soon submerged in the naturalistic current which carries them away, and which is no other than ancient paganism itself.

An accurate study of the history of Judaeo-Christianity in the course of the second century, enables us to estimate justly the value of Hegesippus' testimony to the general state of the Church. That Father declared, in the year 160, "that he found it everywhere in perfect accordance with the law, the prophets, and the commandments of the Lord". Some have concluded from these words that the Jewish tendency was predominant in all the Christianity of that time. But this is attaching to the word a meaning far too exact. Hegesippus appeals simply to the authority of the Scriptures taken as a whole, and as they were ordinarily placed in opposition to Gnosticism. As the Gnostics assailed mainly the Old Testament, they must be met on that ground, and it naturally played an important part in the controversy. Nothing can be argued from the portrait of James drawn by Hegesippus, which in many features recalls the ideas of the Nazarenes, for that description corresponds perfectly to the state of the Church at Jerusalem in its first period, and to the particular place filled by the brother of the Lord. This is history, not doctrine. As to the Jewish origin of Hegesippus himself, nothing is less sustained by evidence. Unless then we put a forced construction on his language, no conclusion can be drawn from it contrary to the reality of the facts as gathered from the general history of the second century. Judaeo-Christianity held on an obscure existence under the name of Nazareneism wherever it did not coalesce with Oriental and Gnostic ideas. It nevertheless exerted an indirect influence upon the Church, diffusing through the general atmosphere ideas and influences, the traces of which we shall discover again and again.