BOOK I

FROM THE PERSECUTION OF THE CHURCH BY NERO TO CONSTANTINE’S EDICT OF TOLERATION. A.D. 64-313.

CHAPTER IV.

THE EARLY HERETICS.

 

Hegesippus and Clement of Alexandria have been derided by the greatest of English historians as having stated that the church was not polluted by schism or heresy until the reign of Trajan, or that of Hadrian; and it is added, “We may observe, with much more propriety, that during [the earlier] period the disciples of the Messiah were indulged in a freer latitude, both of faith and practice, than has ever been allowed in succeeding ages”. In reality, however, the fathers who are cited make no such assertion as is here supposed; their words relate, not to the appearance of the first symptoms of error, but to the distinct formation of bodies which at once claimed the Christian name and held doctrines different from those of the church. Nor has the remark which is offered by way of correction any other truth than this,—that the measures of the church for the protection of her members against erroneous teaching were taken only as the development of evil made them necessary. The New Testament itself bears ample witness both to the existence of false doctrine during the lifetime of the apostles, and to the earnestness with which they endeavoured to counteract it. Among the persons who are there censured by name, some appear to be taxed with faults of practice only; but of others the opinions are condemned. Thus it is said of Hymenaeus that he had “made shipwreck concerning the faith”; that he had “erred concerning the truth, saying that the resurrection is past already”; and Alexander and Philetus are included in the same charges. In St. Paul’s Epistles, besides those passages which bear a controversial character on their surface, there are many in which a comparison with the language of early heresy may lead us to discern such a character. And the same may be observed of other apostolical writings; those of St. John especially are throughout marked by a reference to prevailing errors, and to the language in which these were clothed. And long before the probable date of any Christian scripture, we meet with him who has always been regarded as the father of heresy—the magician Simon of Samaria.

In reading of the ancient heretics we must remember that the accounts of them come from their enemies; and our own experience will show us how easily misunderstanding or misrepresentation of an opponent may creep in even where there is no unfair intention. We must not be too ready to believe evil; we must beware of confounding the opinions of heresiarchs with those of their followers; and especially we must beware of too easily supposing that the founders of sects were unprincipled or profligate men, since by so doing we should not only, in many cases, be wrong as to the fact, but should forego an important lesson. The “fruits” by which “false prophets” shall be known are not to be sought in their own personal conduct (which may be inconsistent, either for the worse or for the better, with their teaching), but in the results which follow from their principles,—in their developed doctrines and maxims, and in those of their disciples.

But, on the other hand, if the ancients, and those who have implicitly followed them in treating such subjects, must be read with caution, it is no less necessary to be on our guard against the theories and statements of some moderns, who are ready to sympathize with every reputed heretic, to represent him as only too far elevated by genius and piety above the church of his own day, and conjecturally to fill up the gaps of his system, to explain away its absurdities, and to harmonize its contradictions. A writer who endeavours to enter into the mind of a heresiarch, and to trace the course of his ideas, is, indeed, more likely to help us towards an understanding of the matter than one who sets out with the presumption that the man's deliberate purpose was to vent detestable blasphemies, and to ruin the souls of his followers; and we may often draw instruction or warning from Beausobre or Neander, where the orthodox vehemence of Epiphanius or Baronius would only tempt us to question whether opinions so extravagant as those which are imputed to heretical parties could ever have been really held by any one. Yet we must not assume that things cannot have been because the idea of them appears monstrous; we must remember that even the most ingenious conjecture may be mistaken; and, if the conclusions of a system as to faith or morals are abominable, we may not speak of such a system with admiration or indulgence on account of any poetical beauty or philosophical depth which may appear to be mixed up with its errors.

The systems of the earliest heretical teachers were for the most part of the class called Gnostic,—a name which implies pretensions to more than ordinary knowledge. It is disputed whether St. Paul intended to refer to this sense of the word in his warning against “knowledge falsely so called”; but although it seems most likely that the peculiar use of the term did not begin until later, the thing itself certainly existed in the time of the apostles. The Gnostics were for the most part so remote in their tenets from the Christian belief that they would now be classed rather with utter aliens from the Gospel than with heretics; but in early times the title of heretic was given to all who in any way whatever introduced the name of Christ into their systems, so that, as has been remarked, if Mahomet had appeared in the second century, Justin Martyr or Irenaeus would have spoken of him as an heretic. On looking at the strange opinions which are thus brought before us, we may wonder how they could ever have been adopted by any to whom the Christian faith had been made known. But a consideration of the circumstances will lessen our surprise; Gnosticism is in truth not to be regarded as a corruption of Christianity, but as an adoption of some Christian elements into a system of different origin.

At the time when the Gospel appeared, a remarkable mixture had taken place in the existing systems of religion and philosophy. The Jews had during their captivity become acquainted with the Chaldaean and Persian doctrines : many of them had remained in the east, and a constant communication was kept up between the descendants of these and their brethren of the Holy Land. Thus the belief of the later Jews had been much tinged with oriental ideas, especially as to angels and spiritual beings. The prevailing form of Greek philosophy—the Platonic—had, from the first, contained elements of eastern origin; and in later days the intercourse of nations had led to a large adoption of foreign additions. The great city of Alexandria, in particular, which was afterwards to be the cradle of Gnosticism, became a centre of philosophical speculations. In its schools were represented the doctrines of Egypt, of Greece, of Palestine, and indirectly those of Persia and Chaldaea—themselves affected by the systems of India and the further east. The prevailing tone of mind was eclectic; all religions were regarded as having in them something divine, while no one was supposed to possess a full and sufficient revelation. Hence ideas were borrowed from one to fill up the deficiency of another. Hence systems became so intermingled, and were so modified by each other, that learned men have differed as to the origin of Gnosticism—some referring it chiefly to Platonism, while others trace it to oriental sources. Hence, too, we can understand how Christianity came to be combined with notions so strangely unlike itself. The same eclectic principle which had produced the fusion of other systems, led speculative minds to adopt something from the Gospel; they took only so much as was suitable for their purpose, and they interpreted this at will. The substance of each system is Platonic, or oriental, or derived from the later Judaism; the Scriptural terms which are introduced are used in senses altogether different from that which they bear in Christian theology.

The especial characteristic of the Gnostics was (as has been stated) a pretension to superior knowledge. By this the more elevated spirits were to be distinguished from the vulgar, for whom faith and traditional opinion were said to be sufficient; the Gnostics sometimes complained of it as an injustice that they were excluded from the communion of the church, whereas they were willing to leave the multitude in possession of the common creed, and only claimed for themselves the privilege of understanding doctrine in an inner and more refined sense. On such a principle the Old Testament had been interpreted by Philo of Alexandria, the type of a Platonizing Jew; and now the principle was applied to the New Testament, from which texts were produced by way of sanction for it. As for the older Scriptures, the Gnostics either rejected them altogether, or perverted them by an unlimited license of allegorical explanation.

We find, as common to all the Gnostic systems, a belief in one supreme God, dwelling from eternity in the pleroma, or fullness of light. From him proceed forth successive generations of aeons, or spiritual beings, the chief of which appear from their names to be impersonated attributes of the Deity; and in proportion as these emanations are more remote from the primal source, the likeness of his perfections in them becomes continually fainter. Matter is regarded as eternal, and as essentially evil. Out of it the world was formed, not by the supreme God, but by the Demiurge—a being who is represented by some heresiarchs as merely a subordinate and unconscious instrument of the divine will, but by others as positively malignant, and hostile to the Supreme. This Demiurge (or creator) was the national God of the Jews—the God of the Old Testament; according, therefore, as he is viewed in each system, the Mosaic economy is either acknowledged as preparatory to a higher dispensation or rejected as evil. Christ was sent into the world to deliver man from the tyranny of the Demiurge. But the Christ of Gnosticism was neither very God nor very man; his spiritual nature, as being an emanation from the supreme God, was necessarily inferior to its original; and, on the other hand, an emanation from God could not dwell in a material, and consequently evil, body. Either, therefore, Jesus was a mere man, on whom the aeon Christ descended at his baptism, to forsake him again before his crucifixion; or the body with which Christ seemed to be clothed was a phantom, and all his actions were only in appearance.

Since matter was evil, the Gnostic was required to overcome it; but here arose an important practical difference among the sectaries; for while some of them sought the victory by a high ascetic abstraction from the things of sense, the baser kind professed to show their knowledge by wallowing in impurity and excess. The same view as to the evil nature of matter led to a denial of the resurrection of the body. The Gnostic could admit no other than a spiritual resurrection; the object of his philosophy was to emancipate the spirit from its gross and material prison; at death, the soul of the perfect Gnostic, having already risen in baptism, was to be gathered into the bosom of God, while such souls as yet lacked their full perfection were to work it out in a course of transmigrations. The contest of good with evil (it was taught) is to end in the victory of good. Every spark of life which originally came from God will be purified and restored, will return to its source, and will dwell with him for ever in the pleroma.

After this general sketch of the Gnostic doctrines, we may proceed to notice in detail a few of the most prominent among the early heretical systems.

First among the precursors of Gnosticism stands Simon, usually styled Magus or the Sorcerer, a native of the Samaritan village of Gittum, as to whom our information is partly derived from Scripture itself. He is supposed to have studied at Alexandria and, on returning to his native country, he advanced high spiritual pretensions, “giving out that himself was some great one”, and being generally acknowledged by the Samaritans as “the great power of God”. Simon belonged to a class of adventurers not uncommon in his day, who addressed themselves especially to that desire of intercourse with a higher world which was then widely felt. Their doctrines were a medley of Jewish, Greek, and Oriental notions; they affected mysteries and revelations; they practiced the arts of conjuration and divination; and it would seem that in many of them there was a mixture of conscious imposture with self-delusion and superstitious credulity. Simon’s reception of baptism, and his attempt to buy the privilege of conferring the Holy Ghost, may be interpreted as tokens of a belief that the apostles, through a knowledge of higher secrets or a connection with superior intelligences, possessed in a greater degree the same theurgic power to which he himself pretended. The feeling of awe with which he was struck by St. Peter’s reproof and exhortation would seem to have been of very short continuance.

It is said that he afterwards roved through various countries, choosing especially those which the Gospel had not yet reached, and endeavouring to preoccupy the ground by his own system, into which the name of Christ was now introduced; that he bought at Tyre a beautiful prostitute, named Helena, who became the companion of his wanderings; that in the reign of Claudius he went to Rome, where he acquired great celebrity, and was honoured with a statue in the island of the Tiber; that he there disputed with St. Peter and St. Paul (a circumstance which, if true, must be referred to a later visit, in the reign of Nero); that he attempted to fly in the air, and was borne up by his familiar demons, until at the prayer of St. Peter he fell to the earth; and that he died soon after, partly of the hurt which he had received, and partly of vexation at his discomfiture. Fabulous as parts of this story evidently are, it is yet possible that they may have had some foundation. There is no apparent reason for denying that Simon may have visited Rome, and may there have had contests with the two great apostles; and even the story of his flying may have arisen from an attempt which was really made by a Greek adventurer in the reign of Nero.

Simon is said to have taught that God existed from eternity in the depth of inaccessible light; that from him proceeded the Thought or Conception of his mind (Ennoia); that from God and the Ennoia emanated by successive generations pairs of male and female aeons. The Ennoia, issuing forth from the pleroma, produced a host of angels, by whom the world was made; and these angels, being ignorant of God and unwilling to acknowledge any author of their being, rose against their female parent, subjected her to various indignities, and imprisoned her in a succession of material bodies. Thus at one time she had animated the form of the beautiful wife of Menelaus; and at last she had taken up her abode in that of the Tyrian Helena, the companion of Simon. The Ennoia herself remained throughout a pure spiritual essence as at the first; the pollutions and degradations of the persons in whom she had dwelt attached only to their material bodies, and were a part of the oppressions inflicted on the divine aeon.

There are various statements as to the character which Simon claimed for himself. It has been said that he professed to be the supreme God, who (according to Simon) had revealed himself to the Samaritans as the Father, to the Jews as the Son, and to the Gentiles as the Holy Ghost; but it would seem rather that by professing to be the “great power of God” he meant to identify himself with the chief male aeon of his system.

He taught that man was held in subjection by the angels who created the world; that not only were the Mosaic dispensation and the Old Testament prophecies to be referred to these, but the received distinctions of right and wrong were invented by them for the purpose of enslaving mankind and consequently that those who should trust in Simon and Helena need not concern themselves with the observance of any moral rules, since they were to be saved, not by works of righteousness, but by grace. Simon professed that he himself had descended from the highest heaven for the purpose of rescuing the Ennoia—“the lost sheep”, as he termed her—from the defilement of her fleshly prison, of revealing himself to men, and delivering them from the yoke of the angels. In passing through the spheres, he had in each assumed a suitable form; and thus on earth he appeared as a man. He was the same aeon who had been known as Jesus, the Messiah. The history of our Lord’s life and death he explained on the docetic principle. The resurrection of the body was denied; but as the soul, when set free, must pass through several spheres on its way to the pleroma, and as the angels of those spheres had the power of impeding its flight, it was necessary to propitiate them, evil as they were in themselves, by sacrifices.

According to St. Epiphanius, Simon said that Helena was the Holy Spirit. As, then, that Person of the Godhead was held by him to have enlightened the Gentiles— (not, however, in the Christian sense, but by means of the Greek philosophy)—Helena was thus identified with the Greek goddess of wisdom, and was represented and worshipped in the character of Minerva, while Simon received like honours under the form of Jupiter.

The followers of Simon were divided into various sects, which are said to have been addicted to necromancy and other magical arts, and to have carried out in practice his doctrine of the indifference of actions. Justin Martyr states that in his day (about A.D. 140) Simon was worshipped as the chief God by almost all the Samaritans, and had adherents in other countries; but the heresy declined so rapidly that Origen, about a century later, questions whether it had in the whole world so many as thirty adherents.

Passing over Menander, (whose doctrines were not so unlike those of his master, Simon, as to require a separate detail), and the Nicolaitans (as to whom nothing is known with certainty, beyond the denunciation of them in the Apocalypses), the next considerable name which we meet with is that of Cerinthus, who rose into notoriety in the reign of Domitian.

Cerinthus was a native of Judaea, and, after having studied at Alexandria, established himself as a teacher in his own country; but at a later time he removed to Ephesus, as being a more favourable scene for the diffusion of his opinions. St. John, who had been confronted with the father of heresy in the earliest days of the Gospel, was reserved for a contest with Cerinthus in the church over which he had long presided; both in his Gospel and in his Epistles a reference to the errors of this heresiarch appears to be strongly marked. Unlike his predecessors, Cerinthus was content to be a teacher, without claiming for himself any place in his scheme. This was a link between the opposite systems of Judaism and Gnosticism, and would seem to have been in itself inconsistent, although we have no means of judging how the inventor attempted to reconcile its elements. He taught that the world was made by an angel, remote from the supreme God, limited in capacity and in knowledge, ignorant of the Supreme, and yet unconsciously serving him. To this angel, and others of the same order, Cerinthus referred the Law and the Prophets; the Old Testament, therefore, was not in the Cerinthian system regarded as evil, but as imperfect and subordinate. The nature of the Demiurge fixed a level above which the mass of the Jewish people could not rise; but the elect among them had attained to a higher knowledge. Jesus was represented as a real man, born in the usual way of Joseph and Mary, and chosen by God to be the Messiah on account of his eminent righteousness; the aeon Christ descended on him at his baptism, revealing the Most High to him, and enduing him with the power of miracles, to be exercised for the confirmation of his doctrine. The Demiurge, jealous of finding his power thus invaded, stirred up the Jewish rulers to persecute Jesus; but before the crucifixion the aeon Christ returned to the pleroma. By some it is said that Cerinthus admitted the resurrection of Jesus; by others, that he expected it to take place at the commencement of the millennium, when the human body was to be reunited with the Christ from heaven. As it appears certain that Cerinthus allowed the resurrection of the body, he cannot have shared in the Gnostic views as to the inherently evil nature of matter.

Although Christ had revealed the true spiritual Judaism, it was said that the outward preparatory system was to be retained in part during the present imperfect state of things; Cerinthus, therefore, required the observance of such Jewish usages as Jesus had sanctioned by Himself submitting to them. The only part of the New Testament which he received was a mutilated Gospel of St. Matthew.

The doctrine of an earthly reign of Christ with his saints for a thousand years has been referred to Cerinthus as its author; and it has been said that his conceptions of the millennial happiness were grossly sensual. These assertions, however (which rest on the authority of Caius, a Roman presbyter, who wrote about the year 210), have been much questioned. It seems clear that the millenarian opinions which soon after prevailed in the church were not derived from Cerinthus, and that it was a controversial artifice to throw odium on them by tracing them to so discreditable a source. Nor, even if the morality of Cerinthus were as bad as his opponents represent it, can we well suppose him to have connected the notion of licentious indulgence with a state of bliss which was to have Christ for its sovereign.

While the Gnostics, imbued with the ideas of vastness and complexity which are characteristic of oriental religions, looked down on Christianity as too simple, it had also to contend with enemies of an opposite kind. We very early find traces of a Judaizing tendency; and although the middle course adopted by the council of Jerusalem, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, was calculated to allay the differences which had arisen as to the obligation of the Mosaic law on those who had embraced the faith of Christ, oppositions on the side of Judaism often recur in the books of the New Testament.

This Judaism at length issued in the formation of distinct sects. The name of Nazarenes, which had originally been applied to all Christians, became appropriated to the party which maintained that the law was binding on Christians of Jewish race, but did not wish to enforce it on Gentiles; while those who insisted on its obligation as universal were styled Ebionites. The Nazarenes are generally supposed to have been orthodox, and to have been acknowledged as such by the church; the Ebionites were unquestionably heretical.

The name of the latter party has been variously derived from that of a supposed founder, and from a Hebrew word which signifies poor. The existence of Ebion is now generally disbelieved; but there remains the question how the title of poor came to be attached to the sect,—whether it was given by opponents, with a reference to the meagreness and beggarly character of their doctrines; or whether it was assumed by themselves, as significant of their voluntary poverty, and with an allusion to the beatitude of the “poor in spirit”. The formation of the sect, as such, is dated by some in the reign of Domitian, or earlier. By others it is supposed that the separation of both Ebionites and Nazarenes from the church took place as late as A.D. 136-8, and that it was caused by the adoption of Gentile usages in the church of Jerusalem; while a third view connects the schism of the Ebionites with the statement of Hegesippus, that having been disappointed in aspiring to the bishopric of Jerusalem, began to corrupt the church—a supposition by which the origin of Ebionism would be fixed about the year 107.

In opposition to the Gnostics, the Ebionites held that the world was the work of God himself. As to the person of Christ, although some of them are said to have admitted his miraculous birth, while they denied his Godhead and his pre-existence, they for the most part supposed him to be a mere man, the offspring of Joseph and Mary, and chosen to be the Messiah and Son of God because he alone of men had fulfilled the law. They believed that this high destination was unknown to him, until at his baptism it was revealed by Elijah, in the person of John the Baptist; and that he then received a heavenly influence, which forsook him again before his crucifixion.

It would seem that the Ebionites were divided as to their view of the Old Testament. Some of them supposed Christianity to differ from the law only by the addition of certain features; m while the adepts regarded it as a restoration of the genuine Mosaic system, which they supposed to have been corrupted in the Hebrew Scriptures. These more advanced members of the sect considered Moses to be the only true prophet; they rejected, not only the later Jewish traditions, but the whole of the Old Testament except the Pentateuch; and even they did not admit it as the work of Moses himself, but, by ascribing it to reporters, who were supposed to have wilfully or ignorantly corrupted his words, they found a pretext for rejecting so much of it as did not fall in with their principles. Of the New Testament they admitted no part, except a Hebrew Gospel of St. Matthew, in which the account of our Lord’s birth was omitted. They relied much on apocryphal scriptures, and were especially hostile to St. Paul.

Although some corruptions of morals are attributed to the later Ebionites, the practice of the sect in its earlier days was undoubtedly strict. Some parties among them renounced all property, and abstained not only from the flesh of animals, but from their produce, such as eggs and milk. In their worship and polity they affected Jewish usages and terms; they practiced circumcision and ceremonial ablutions; they rigidly observed the Jewish Sabbath; they had synagogues, rulers, and the like. They celebrated the Eucharist with unleavened bread, and used only water in the cup. Like the Cerinthians, they held the doctrine of an earthly reign of Christ, who was to make Jerusalem the seat of his power, to subdue all enemies, and to raise the Jewish kingdom to a splendour before unknown.

Ebionism continued to exist in Syria and Peraea as late as the end of the fourth century.

Menander, who has been mentioned as the successor of Simon Magus, is said to have been the master of two noted heretics, who may be considered as the founders respectively of the Syrian and of the Alexandrian Gnosticism—Saturninus and Basilides.

Saturninus, who was born at Antioch, and there established his school, taught that the supreme God, or “Unknown Father”, produced a multitude of spiritual beings; that in the lowest gradation of the spiritual world, close on the borders which separate the realm of light from the chaos of matter were seven angels, the rulers of the planets; and that these angels took a portion from the material mass and shaped it into a world, the regions of which they divided among themselves—the God of the Jews being their chief. A bright shape, let down for a moment from the distant source of light, and then withdrawn, excited new desires and projects in them: unable as they were to seize and to fix the dazzling image, they endeavoured to frame a man after its likeness; but their creature was only able to grovel on the earth like a worm, until the Father in pity sent down to it a spark of his own divine life. But in opposition to the elect race, Satan, the lord of Matter, with whom the angels carried on an unceasing warfare, produced an unholy race, and the elect, while they sojourn in this world, are exposed to assaults from him and from his agents, both human and spiritual. The Old Testament was in part given by the seven angels, especially by the God of the Jews, and in part by Satan. In order to deliver the elect from their enemies, and also from their subjection to the God of the Jews and the other planetary angels, who aimed at establishing an independent kingdom, the Father sent down the aeon Nous (Mind), or Christ, clothed with a phantastic body. At the consummation of all things, according to Saturninus, the bodies of the elect were to be resolved into their elements, while the soul was to re-enter into the bosom of the unknown Father, from whom it had been derived.

The precepts of Saturninus were strictly ascetic; he forbade marriage and the propagation of mankind; but it would seem that the more rigid observances were required only of the highest grade among his followers. The sect did not extend beyond Syria, and soon came to an end.

Basilides, who became conspicuous about the year 125, is said to have been, like Saturninus, a Syrian; but it was at Alexandria that he fixed himself, and the leading character of his system was Egyptian. He taught that from the Supreme God were evolved by successive generation seven intelligences (which were, in fact, personified attributes)—Understanding, Word, Thought, Wisdom, Power, Righteousness, and Peace. These gave birth to a second order of spirits; the second to a third; and the course of emanations continued until there were three hundred and sixty-five orders, each consisting of seven spirits, and each with a heaven of its own; while every heaven, with its inhabitants, was an inferior antitype of that immediately above it. The number of the heavens was expressed in the Greek notation by the letters of the word Abraxas or Abrasax, in which the most approved interpretations derive from the Coptic, and explain as meaning new word or sacred word. The same name was used also to denote the providence which directs the universe—not the supreme God as he is in himself (since he is represented as “not to be named”), but God in so far as he is manifested, or the collective hierarchy of emanations

The angels of the lowest heaven (which is that which is visible from earth) formed the world and its inhabitants after a pattern shown to them by the aeon Sophia or Wisdom. The chief angel of this order, who is called the Archon, or Ruler, was the God of the Jews, while the other regions of the world were divided by lot among his brother angels; and, in consequence of the Archon’s desire to exalt his own people above the rest of mankind, the other angels had stirred up the Gentiles to enmity against the Jews. The Pentateuch was given by the Archon: the prophecies came from the other angels.

Man received from the creative angels a soul which is the seat of the senses and of the passions; and in addition to this the supreme God bestowed on him a rational and higher soul, which the inferior soul is continually endeavouring to weaken. Although Basilides cannot rightly be described as a dualist, he held that throughout all nature there had been an encroachment of evil on good, “like rust on steel”, and that the object of the present state was to enable the souls of men (which, as they had come from God, could never perish, but must return to him) to disengage themselves from the entanglements of evil. The knowledge of God had become faint among men; the Archon himself, although he had served as an instrument of the Supreme in giving the Law, was yet ignorant of its true character—of its spiritual significancy and its preparatory office—which the spiritual among the Jews had alone been able to discern. In order, then, to enlighten mankind, to deliver them from the limited system of the Archon, and enable them to rise towards the Supreme, the first-begotten aeon, Nous or Understanding, descended on Jesus, the holiest of men, at his baptism and by this manifestation the Archon learnt for the first time his own real place in the scale of the universe. The later Basilidians represented him as exasperated by the discovery, so that he instigated the Jews to persecute Jesus; but it is a question whether the founder of the sect shared in this view, a or whether he supposed the Archon to have reverently acquiesced in the knowledge of his inferior position.

The doctrine of an atonement was inconsistent with the principles of Basilides. He allowed no other justification than that of advancement in sanctification, and laid it down that everyone suffers for his own sins. God, he said, forgives no sins but such as are done unwillingly or in ignorance; all other sins must be expiated, and, until the expiation be complete, the soul must pass, under the guidance of its guardian angels, through one body after another,—not only human bodies, but also those of the lower creatures. And thus such suffering as cannot be traced to any visible cause is to be regarded as the purgation of sin committed in some former existence, while the death of the innocent may be the punishment of germs of evil which would have grown up if life had been continued. On this principle Basilides even accounted for the sufferings of the man Jesus himself; and by such theories he intended to justify the providential government of the world, as to which he is reported to have declared that he would “rather say anything than find fault with Providence”.

While the Gnostics in general spoke of faith and knowledge as opposites, Basilides taught that faith must run through the whole spiritual progress, and that the degrees of knowledge increase in proportion as faith becomes fitted to receive them. He divided his disciples into several grades; in order to admission among the highest adepts, a silence of five years was required. The authorities on which Basilides chiefly relied were some prophecies which bore the names of Ham, Parchor, Barcobas, and Barcoph, with an esoteric tradition which he professed to derive from St. Matthias, and from Glaucias, an interpreter of St. Peter. He dealt with the New Testament in an arbitrary way; he did not reject St. Paul, but placed him below St. Peter, and declared some of the epistles ascribed to him to be spurious.

This system became more popular than any that had preceded it, and St. Jerome informs us that even in the fifth century Basilidianism continued to exist. The doctrines of the sect, however, were much corrupted in the course of time. The view of Judaism was altered, so that the Archon came to be regarded as opposed to the supreme God; and consequently the Gnostic was at liberty to trample on all that had proceeded from the inferior power, to disregard all the laws of morality. Instead of the doctrine which Basilides held in common with some other sectaries, that the aeon who descended on Jesus at baptism forsook him before his crucifixion, a strange docetic fancy was introduced—that his body was phantastical, and that he transferred his own form to Simon of Cyrene, who suffered in his stead on the cross, while Jesus in the form of Simon stood by and derided the executioners. The Gnostic, therefore, was not to confess the crucifixion, but those who should own it were still under bondage to the Archon. The later Basilidians made no scruple of eating idol sacrifices, of taking part in heathen rites and festivities; they denied their faith in time of persecution, and mocked at martyrdom as a folly, inasmuch as the person for whose sake it was borne was, according to their doctrine, merely the crucified Simon. They were also addicted to magic; he, it was said, who should master the whole system, who should know the names and origin of all the angels, would become superior, invisible, and incomprehensible to them. Most of the gems which are found inscribed with the mystical Abraxas are supposed to have been used by the sect as amulets or talismans, although it is certain that some of these symbols were purely heathen.

Of all the Gnostic leaders Valentinus was the most eminent for ability; his system was distinguished beyond the rest for its complex and elaborate character, and it surpassed them all in popularity.

Valentinus is supposed to have been of Jewish descent, but was a native of Egypt, and studied at Alexandria. He appears to have been brought up as a Christian, or at least to have professed Christianity in early life; and hence his doctrine, with all its wildness, had a greater infusion of scriptural language and ideas than those of the older Gnostic teachers. Tertullian asserts that he became a heresiarch on being disappointed of a bishopric; but it does not appear in what stage of his career the disappointment occurred, and the truth of the story has been altogether questioned. It was about the year 140 that he visited Rome, where Irenaeus states that he remained from the pontificate of Hyginus to that of Anicetus. At Rome, where the church, in its simple and severe orthodoxy, was less tolerant of novelties than that from which Valentinus had come, he was twice excommunicated; and on his final exclusion he retired to Cyprus, where he wrought out and published his system. His death is supposed to have taken place about 160,—whether in Cyprus or at Rome is uncertain.

In his doctrines Valentinus appears to have borrowed from the religions of Egypt and of Persia, from the Cabala, from Plato, Pythagoras, and the Hesiodic theogony. He supposed a first principle, self-existent and perfect, to whom he gave the name of Bythos (i.e. unfathomable depth). This being, who from eternity had existed in repose, at length resolved to manifest himself; from him and the Ennoia or Conception of his mind, who was also named Charis (Grace), or Sige (Silence), were produced a pair of aeons,—the male styled Nous (Understanding), or Monogenes (Only-begotten); the female, Aletheia (Truth).

From these, by successive generations, emanated two other pairs,—Logos (the Word, or Reason) and Zoe (Life); Anthropos (Man) and Ecclesia (the Church). Thus was composed the first grade of beings—the ogdoad or octave. Next, from Logos and Zoe were produced five pairs of aeons,—the decad; and then, from Anthropos and Ecclesia, six pairs, —the dodecad; making up in all the number of thirty. In addition to these there was an unwedded aeon, named Horos (Boundary), or Stauros (the Cross), the offspring of Bythos and Sige, whose office it was to enforce the principle of limitation, and keep every existence in its proper place.

The first-begotten, Nous, alone was capable of comprehending the supreme Father. The other aeons envied his knowledge, and in proportion to their remoteness from the source was the vehemence of their desire to fathom it. Sophia (Wisdom), the last of the thirty, filled with an uncontrollable eagerness, issued forth from the pleroma, with the intention of soaring up to the original of her being; but she was in danger of being absorbed into the infinity of his nature, or of being lost in the boundless void without, when Horos led her back to the sphere which she had so rashly forsaken. Nous now, by the providence of Bythos, produced a new pair of aeons—Christ and the Holy Spirit. Christ taught the elder aeons that Bythos was incomprehensible—that they could only know him through the Only-begotten, and that the happiness of every being was to rest content with such measure of light as had been allotted to it; the Spirit established equality among them, and taught them to unite in glorifying the Supreme. Harmony was restored, and all the aeons combined to produce Jesus (or Saviour), the flower of the pleroma, endowed by each with the most precious gift which he could contribute. With him were also produced a host of attendant angels.

But while Sophia was on her flight beyond the pleroma, her longings had, without the co-operation of her partner Theletos (Will), given birth to an abortive, shapeless, and imperfect being called by the name of Achamoth. This being remained shut out from the pleroma, and in utter darkness; when Christ, taking pity on her, bestowed on her a form, and showed her a momentary glimpse of the celestial brightness. Achamoth endeavoured to approach the light, but was repelled by Horos. On this she was seized with violent agitations; sometimes she smiled at the remembrance of the glorious vision; sometimes she wept at her exclusion. Her emotions acted on the inert and formless mass of matter; from her turning towards the source of light was produced psychic existence; from her grief at being left in darkness and vacuity, from her fear lest life should be withdrawn from her, as the light had been, was produced material existence. Among the material productions were Satan and his angels; among the psychic was the Demiurge. Achamoth turns in supplication to the Christ, who sends down to her the aeon Jesus, attended by his angels, and equipped with the power of the whole pleroma. Jesus enlightens her and calms her agitation; from the brightness of his angels she conceives, and gives birth to pneumatic or spiritual existence. The Demiurge sets to work on the surrounding chaos, separates the psychic from the material elements, and out of the former builds seven heavens, of which the highest is his own sphere, while each of the others is committed to a superintendent angel. He then makes man, bestowing on him a psychic soul and body; but Achamoth, without the knowledge of the Demiurge, implants in the new creature a spark of spiritual nature; and the creator and his angels stand amazed on discovering that their workmanship has in it the element of something higher than themselves.

The Demiurge becomes jealous of man. He places him under a narrow and oppressive law; and, when man breaks this, he thrusts him down from the third heaven, or paradise, to earth, and envelopes his psychic body in a “coat of skin”—a fleshly prison, subjecting the man to the bonds of matter (for thus Valentinus explained Genesis III. 21). All this, however, happened through the providence of the Supreme, whose design it was that, by entering into the world of matter, the spiritual element should become the means of its destructions

The Demiurge knew of nothing superior to himself; he had acted as the instrument of Bythos, but unconsciously, and, supposing himself to be the original of the universe, he instructed the Jewish prophets to proclaim him as the only God. In the writings of the prophets, accordingly, Valentinus professed to distinguish between the things which they had uttered by the inspiration of the limited Demiurge, and those which, without being themselves aware of it, they had derived from a higher source. The Demiurge taught the prophets to promise a Messiah according to his own conceptions; he framed this Messiah of a psychic soul with a psychic and immaterial body, capable of performing human actions, yet exempt from human feelings; and to these elements, without the knowledge of his maker, was added a pneumatic soul from the world above. This “nether Christ” was born of the Virgin Mary—passing through her “as water through a tube”, without taking anything of her substance; he ate and drank, but derived no nourishment from his earthly food. For thirty years—a period which had reference to the number of inhabitants in the pleromas—he lived as a pattern of ascetic righteousness, until at his baptism the aeon Jesus descended on him, with the design of fulfilling the most exalted meaning of prophecy, which the Demiurge had not understood; and then the Demiurge became aware of the higher spiritual world, and gladly yielded himself as an instrument for the advancement of the Messiah’s kingdom.

Valentinus divided men into three classes, represented by Cain, Abel, and Seth respectively—the material, who could not attain to knowledge, or be saved; the spiritual, who could not be lost; and the psychic, who might be saved or lost, according to their works. Heathenism was said to be material, Judaism and the Christianity of the church to be psychic, and Gnosticism to be spiritual; y but it was not denied that individuals might be either above or below the level of the systems which they professed. Among the Jews, in particular, Valentinus held that there had always been a class of lofty spiritual natures, which rose above the limits of the old dispensation. The Demiurge had discerned the superior virtue of these, and had rewarded them by making them prophets and kings, while he ignorantly imagined that their goodness was derived from himself.

The pure truth was for the first time revealed to mankind by the coming of Christ. To the spiritual his mission was for the purpose of enlightenment; their nature is akin to the pleroma, and they are to enter into it through knowledge, which unites them with Christ. But for the psychic a different redemption was necessary; and this was wrought out by the suffering of the psychic Messiah, who before his crucifixion was abandoned, not only by the aeon Jesus, but by his own spiritual soul. Valentinus, therefore, differed from Basilides and others by allowing a kind of atonement; but his doctrine on this point was very unlike that of the church, inasmuch as he did not truly acknowledge either the divinity or the humanity of the Saviour.

Christ, it was held, enters into connection with all natures, in order that each may rise to a bliss suitable to its capacity. At baptism the psychic class obtain the forgiveness of their sins, with knowledge and power to master the material elements which cleave to them; while the spiritual are set free from the dominion of the Demiurge, are incorporated into the pleroma, and each enters into fellowship with a corresponding angelic being in the world above. The courses of the two classes were to be throughout distinct. For the psychics, faith was necessary, and, in order to produce it, miracles were requisite; but the spiritual were above the need of such assistances : they were to be saved, not by faith but by knowledge—a doctrine which among the later Valentinians became the warrant for all manner of licentiousness. The literal sense of Scripture was for the psychics, who were unable to penetrate beyond it; but the spiritual were admitted to the understanding of a higher meaning—“the wisdom of the perfect”.

At the final consummation, when the spiritual shall all have been perfected in knowledge—when all the seeds of divine life among mankind shall have been delivered from the bondage of matter—Achamoth, whose place is now in a middle region, between the pleroma and the highest heaven of the Demiurge, will enter into the pleroma, and be united with the heavenly bridegroom Jesus. The matured spiritual natures, shaking off all that is lower, and restoring their psychic souls to the Demiurge who gave them, will follow into the pleroma—each to be united with its angelic partner. The Demiurge will rise from his own heaven to the middle region, where he will reign over the psychic righteous. Then the fire which is now latent in the frame of the world will burst forth, and will annihilate all that is materials

The Valentinian system was plausible in the eyes of Christians, inasmuch as it not only used a language which was in great part scriptural, but professed to receive all the books of Scripture, while it was able to set their meaning aside by the most violent misinterpretations. The Gospel of St. John was regarded by the sect as the highest in authority; but the key to the true doctrine was said to be derived by secret tradition from St. Matthias, and from one Theodas, who was described as a disciple of St. Paul. The initiation into the mysteries of the sect was gradual; Irenaeus tells us that they were disclosed to such persons only as would pay largely, and Tertullian describes with sarcastic humour the manner in which the sectaries baffled the curiosity of any who attempted to penetrate beyond the degree of knowledge with which it was considered that they might safely be entrusted. After the death of their founder the Valentinians underwent the usual processes of division and corruption; Epiphanius states that there were as many as ten varieties of them. A remnant of the sect survived in the beginning of the fifth century

While the system of Valentinus was the most imaginative form of Gnosticism, that of his contemporary Marcion was the most prosaic and practical; and whereas in the other systems knowledge was all in all, the tendency of Marcionism was mainly religious. The chief principle which its author had in common with other Gnostics was the idea of an opposition between Christianity and Judaism; and this he carried to an extreme.

Marcion was born at Sinope, on the Euxine, about the beginning of the second century. His father was eventually bishop of that city; and there is no apparent reason for doubting that Marcion himself was trained as a Christian from infancy. He rose to be a presbyter in the church of Sinope, and professed an ascetic life until (according to a very doubtful story, which rests on the authority of Epiphanius) he was excommunicated by his father for the seduction of a virgin. After having sought in vain to be restored, he left Asia, and arrived at Rome while the see was vacant through the death of Hyginus. He applied for admission into the communion of the Roman church, but was told by the presbyters that the principle of unity in faith and discipline forbade it unless with the consent of the bishop by whom he had been excommunicated. Before leaving his own country Marcion had become notorious for peculiar opinions, which indeed were probably the real cause of his excommunication; and he began to vent these at Rome by asking the presbyters to explain our Lord’s declaration that old bottles are unfit to receive new wine. He disputed the correctness of their answer; and, although his own interpretation of the words is not reported, it would seem, from what is known of his doctrines, that he supposed the “old bottles” to mean the Law, and the “new wine” to be the Gospel.

Having failed in his attempts to gain readmittance into the church, Marcion attached himself to Cerdon, a Syrian, who had for some years sojourned at Rome, alternately making proselytes in secret, and seeking reconciliation with the church by a profession of penitence. The fame of the master was soon lost in that of the disciple, so that it is impossible to distinguish their respective shares in the formation of their system. Marcion is said to have travelled in Egypt and the East for the purpose of spreading his heresy, and is supposed to have died at Rome in the episcopate of Eleutherius. (i.e. between 177 and 190). Tertullian states that he had been repeatedly excluded from the church; that on the last occasion the bishop of Rome restored to him a large sum of money which he had offered “in the first ardour of his faith”; that he obtained a promise of being once more received into communion, on condition of bringing back those whom he had perverted; but that death overtook him before he could fulfil the task.

Unlike the other Gnostics, Marcion professed to be purely Christian in his doctrines; he borrowed nothing from Greece, Egypt, or Persia, and acknowledged no other source of truth but the Holy Scriptures. He was an enemy to allegorical interpretation; while he rejected the tradition of the church, he did not pretend to have any secret tradition of his own; and he denied the opposition between faith and knowledge. But with Scripture itself he dealt very violently. He rejected the whole Old Testament; of the New, he acknowledged only the Gospel of St. Luke and ten of St. Paul’s Epistles, and from these he expunged all that disagreed with his own theories. He did not question the authorship of the other books, but supposed that the writers were themselves blinded by Judaism, and, moreover, that their works had been corrupted in the course of time.

Marcion held the existence of three principles—the supreme God, perfectly good; the devil, or lord of matter, eternal and evil; and between these the Demiurge, a being of limited power and knowledge, whose chief characteristic was a justice unmixed with love or mercy. It is not certain whether the Demiurge was supposed to be an independent existence, or (as in most gnostic systems) an emanation from the supreme God; but the latter opinion is the more probable. It was taught that the creation of the Supreme was immaterial and invisible; that the Demiurge formed this world and its inhabitants out of substance which he had taken from the material chaos without the consent or knowledge of its ruler. The soul of man was not (as in other systems) supposed to be implanted by the supreme God, but to be the work of the Demiurge, and of a quality corresponding to the limited nature of its author; it had no power to withstand the attacks of the material principle, which was represented as always striving to reclaim the portion abstracted from its own domain. Man fell through disobedience to the laws of the Demiurge, and his original nature was changed for the worse. The Demiurge chose for himself one nation—the Jews; to these he gave a law which was not in itself evil, but was fitted only for lower natures, being imperfect in its morality, and destitute of inward spirit. His system was rigorously just; the disobedient he made over to torments, while he rewarded the righteous with rest in “Abraham's bosom”.

The Demiurge promised a Messiah, his son, and of a nature like his own, who was to come, not for the purpose of mediation and forgiveness, but in order to destroy heathenism and to establish the empire of the Jews. But the supreme God, in pity for mankind, of whom the vast majority, without any fault of their own, were excluded from all knowledge of the Demiurge, and were liable to his condemnation, resolved to send down a higher Messiah, his own son. The world had not been prepared for this by any previous revelations; for no such preparation was necessary, as the Messiah’s works were of themselves sufficient evidence of his mission. He appeared suddenly in the synagogue of Capernaum, “in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar”; but in order to obtain a hearing from the Jews, he accommodated himself to their notions, and professed to be that Messiah whom the Demiurge's prophets had taught them to expect. Then, for the first time, the true God was revealed, and forgiveness of sins was bestowed on men, with endowments of knowledge and strength which might enable them to overcome the enmity of matter.

The Demiurge, ignorant of the Messiah’s real nature, but jealous of a power superior to his own, stirred up the Jews against him; the God of matter urged on the Gentiles to join in the persecution, and the Saviour was crucified. Yet, according to Marcion’s view, his body could not really suffer, inasmuch as it was spiritual and ethereal; his submission to the cross was meant to teach that the sufferings of the worthless body are not to be avoided as evils.

Marcion admitted the Saviour’s descent into hell, and with this doctrine was connected one of his strangest fancies—that the heathens, and the reprobates of the Old Testament (such as Cain, Esau, and the men of Sodom), suffering from the vengeance of the Demiurge, gladly hailed the offer of salvation, and were delivered; while the Old Testament saints, being satisfied with the happiness of Abraham’s bosom, and suspecting the Saviour’s call as a temptation, refused to listen to him, and were left as before. This, however, was not to be their final condition. The Demiurge’s Messiah was after all to come; he was to gather the dispersed of Israel out of all lands, to establish an universal empire of the Jews, and to bless the adherents of his father with an earthly happiness; while such of the heathen and of the disobedient as had not been exempted from his power by laying hold on the higher salvation were to be consigned to torments. For the people of the supreme God, it was taught that the soul will be released from the flesh, and will rise to dwell with him in a spiritual body.

The fundamental difficulty with Marcion was the supposed impossibility of reconciling love with punitive justice; hence his distinction between the supreme God, all love, and the Demiurge, all severity. In order to carry out this view he wrote a book called Antitheses in which, with the intention of showing an essential difference between the Old and New Testament, he insisted on all such principles and narratives in the older Scriptures as appeared to be inconsistent with the character of love, and made the most of all the instances in which our Lord had (as Marcion supposed) declared himself against the Jewish system.

Marcion is described as a man of grave disposition and manners. The character of his sect was ascetic; he allowed no animal food except fish; he forbade marriage, and required a profession of continence as a condition of baptism. Baptism, however, might be deferred; the catechumens were (contrary to the practice of the church) admitted to witness the celebration of the highest mysteries; and if a person died in the state of a catechumen, there was a vicarious baptism for the dead. It is said that Marcion allowed baptism to be administered thrice, in the belief that at each repetition the sins committed since the preceding baptism were remitted; that he celebrated the Eucharist with water; and that, as a mark of opposition to Judaism, he enjoined the observance of the seventh day of the week (or Sabbath) as a fast.

The bold rejection of all Jewish and heathen elements, the arbitrary treatment of Holy Scripture, and the apparent severity of the sect, drew many converts. Marcion affected to address his followers as “companions in hatred and tribulation”; they rather courted than shunned persecution; many of them suffered with great constancy for the name of Christ, and the sect boasted of its martyrs. Marcionism is described by Epiphanius as prevailing widely in his own time (about A.D. 400), nor did it become extinct until the sixth century.

Strange and essentially unchristian as Gnosticism was, we must yet not overlook the benefits which Christianity eventually derived from it. Like other heresies, it did good service by engaging the champions of orthodoxy in the investigation and defense of the doctrines which it assailed; but this was not all. In the various forms of Gnosticism, the chief ideas and influences of earlier religions and philosophies were brought into contact with the Gospel—pressing, as it were, for entrance into the Christian system. Thus the church was forced to consider how much in those older systems was true, and how much was false; and, while steadfastly rejecting the falsehood, to appropriate the truth, to hallow it by a combination with the Christian principle, and so to rescue all that was precious from the wreck of a world which was passing away. “It was”, says a late writer, “through the Gnostics that studies, literature, and art were introduced into the church”; and when Gnosticism had accomplished its task of thus influencing the church, its various forms either ceased to exist, or lingered only as the obsolete creeds of an obscure and diminishing remnant.

 

CHAPTER V.

FROM THE ACCESSION OF COMMODUS TO THE DEATH OF ELAGABALUS A.D. 180-222.