Irenæus mentions several successors of Valentinus, some more at length than others.
Respecting Secundus, who was the contemporary and disciple of Valentinus697, he is very brief, merely informing us that he divided the first ogdoad into two tetrads, the right and the left, which he denominated light and darkness: and that he asserted that the Being which erred and was forsaken by the upper powers was not one of the thirty, but one of their productions698. The latter idea would appear to have for its object to remove the origin of evil further from the First Cause: but the former seems to be a contradiction to it, as it brings darkness into the Pleroma.
Epiphanes, whose name the old translator has chosen to render by Clarus, (probably not understanding it to be a proper name,) was the son of Carpocrates699, but attached himself to the followers [pg 309] of Secundus700. He died very young, being according to Clem. Alex. only seventeen at the time of his death, and was honoured as a god by the people of Cephalonia, the birth-place of his mother and his own place of residence. He is identified with the Clarus of the old translator of Irenæus; 1. because he is commonly reckoned next to Secundus701; 2. because Clarus is a literal rendering of Ἐπιφανής; 3. because the doctrines ascribed to Epiphanes are the same as those which are attributed in Irenæus to Clarus702. He differed from his predecessors in not giving any name (properly speaking) to the First Cause, but in calling him Μονότης, and his companion Ἐνότης, which may perhaps be rendered Soleness and Unity. These, he said, constituted only one being. This duopersonal Being produced, without separation from himself, a beginning of all things, comprehensible, but unbegotten and invisible, called the Monad, and with him another power denominated the One. This was his first tetrad; but in the rest he does not appear to have differed from the other Valentinians703.
Ptolemy was a Valentinian, and is said to have been a disciple of Secundus and Epiphanes. It would appear from Irenæus that the system which [pg 310] he states at length, and which I have detailed above, was his actual system704. Epiphanius indeed, quoting Irenæus705, makes him say that this heretic and his disciples ascribed two wives to Bythus, Thought and Will, from whom he made the rest of the Æons to proceed. But it is evident from the version of the Ancient Interpreter that the actual words of Irenæus were Οἱ περὶ Πτολεμαῦον, which may mean either Ptolemy or his followers, and as Tertullian ascribes this tenet to his disciples, desirous of improving upon their master, we may safely conclude that Epiphanius does not intend to attribute it distinctly to Ptolemy, but either to him or to his followers.
Of the followers of Ptolemy, Irenæus mentions the tenets of Colorbasus particularly. He does not indeed name him, but Epiphanes706 and Theodoret707 have supplied that defect, nor is there any contradictory statement on the subject. He taught that the first ogdoad of Æons did not spring successively one pair from another, but that the first four after the First Cause and his Thought were created at once when the Forefather determined upon giving forth some being, that became the Father; as what he emitted was true, it was called the Truth: when [pg 311] he wished to manifest himself, then came Man; and those whom he then foresaw were the Church. Then Man spoke the Word, and from Man and the Church came Life708.
Marcus is mentioned by Irenæus apparently as a disciple of Ptolemy, or at least as having made his system after him709: and as Tertullian710 speaks of him in the same terms, we may safely take that as the sense of Irenæus. We find him first in Asia Minor, recompensing the hospitality of a deacon with whom he lodged by corrupting his wife, who for a good while followed him, but was at length brought back to the Church by the perseverance of the Christians711. Where his subsequent residence was we do not learn. The circumstance which brought him more particularly under the notice of Irenæus was that his opinions and the consequent depravity of morals had spread to the neighbourhood of Lyons712. The practical mischief appears first to have attracted his attention, and he was thence led to inquire into the speculative system which produced such fruits. Both the one and the other shall be noticed in their order.
The scheme differed in reality very little in its [pg 312] frame-work from that of Valentinus, Ptolemy, and Colorbasus; the latter of whom Irenæus represents him as more particularly agreeing with713; but it was differently dressed up. Instead of making the Fulness a system of personal beings or emanations, he made it the name of the Great First Cause, consisting of thirty letters, instead of as many Æons, divided into four syllables, of which the two first consisted of four letters each, the third of ten, and the fourth of twelve. This name originated in the wish of the Great Father to reveal himself. He therefore opened his mouth, and spoke a Word like himself, which was Ἀρχὴ, the Beginning; (this was the first syllable;) then a second, a third, and a fourth. What the three latter are we are not told: but they have continued to sound on from that day to the present, and will continue so to do, until they all unite in sounding forth together the same letter, when the consummation of all things will take place. About this matter, however, there is some obscurity, the passage not being very intelligible714.
It would be tedious beyond measure to enter into the application of this particular notion to the general Gnostic scheme: but he held a particular doctrine in regard to Jesus, which it will be proper to mention. He thought that he was the joint production [pg 313] of Man and the Church, the Word and Life; but that in producing him the angel Gabriel took the place of the Word, the Holy Spirit of Life, the Power of the Most High of Man, and the Virgin Mary of the Church: that the Supreme Father chose him in the womb to manifest himself in him by means of the Word, who therefore descended upon him at his baptism in the form of a dove715.
I come now to the practice of Marcus. He openly pretended supernatural powers, communicated to him by a familiar spirit, which he flattered his followers, chiefly women, by professing to communicate to them716. The Eucharist he found especially suited to his purpose, and was the first apparently who taught any thing like transubstantiation. He used, like the Church, wine mingled with water, but pretended to bring down into it by his prayers, the blood of the supernal Grace; and accordingly, lengthening out his devotion, that the chemical agents, which he doubtless employed, might have time to act, he at length produced the liquid, of a much deeper colour than when he began his incantations. In another of his tricks he gave his female friends a part. He requested one of them to take the mingled cup, and to offer the prayer of benediction; whereupon he poured the contents of it [pg 314] into a much larger cup, which he himself held, which, as he pronounced the mystical blessing upon the woman he employed, gradually became full with the contents of the smaller, and at length overflowed717. This again was, in all probability, effected by some chemical agent, deposited in the bottom of the larger cup, and producing a gradual effervescence: but in those days of ignorance it stamped the worker of such wonders as something more than ordinary man.
In communicating, as he pretended, to his devotees a portion of the grace he possessed, he purposely contrived, in the most subtle manner, to inflame their sensual desires, and to direct them towards himself, without using a single word or act to which he could not immediately give a mystical meaning; so that, if his wishes did not succeed, there was nothing with which he could be charged, without subjecting the person who so charged him to the imputation of having put an unholy meaning upon holy things. And if they did succeed, the victim, if not conscience-seared, would feel self-corrupted and self-betrayed. In this way he became master, not only of the persons, but also of the substance of many women of wealth and station718. To make his arts, however, the more successful, he administered [pg 315] to them inflammatory drugs719: and still more to guard himself from their defection, under the terror of conscience, and the dread of future judgment, he taught them a form of words, to be addressed to their mother Achamoth, whom he represents as seated with God on his throne, by means of which they would be rendered invisible to the Judge, and pass unhurt to their heavenly spouses the angels720.
Such a scheme as this was too palatable to human nature not to have many followers; and accordingly it found its way to Lyons, where Irenæus was bishop. The exact nature of it was first learnt by the confessions of his victims and those of his followers, when, recovering from their delusion, they wished to be readmitted to the Church. One particular instance I have already mentioned, of his having seduced the wife of a deacon in Asia Minor, with whom he had lodged. This person remained with him for a long time; but, being at length restored by the unwearied efforts of the Christians, spent the rest of her life bewailing the pollution she had sustained. This was not the only instance of repentance; but most appear to have dreaded the public acknowledgment which was then required in the case of gross transgression, and thus never to have returned721.
There is one feature of the Gnostic scheme common to almost every variety of the Gnostics, which was reserved for a separate detail; and which Irenæus introduces immediately after the account of the Marcosian heresy, having probably been able to obtain a more perfect account of their views on that subject, than of those of any other sect. That feature is their ordinance of Redemption722; which was in fact the initiating rite of their perfect adepts723, and without denying baptism, threw it into the back ground, and thus virtually annulled it724. The professed object of this rite was the regeneration of those who underwent it, preparatory to their entering into the Fulness725. The outward form of it was various, according to the fancy of the mystagogue726. Some celebrated it as a marriage; others made it a baptism in water, with varying forms of words727; others again poured a mixture of oil and water upon the head of the person who received it; whilst some declared, that the blessing being purely spiritual, all outward signs were unavailing and impertinent; that knowledge was in fact redemption, and that those, [pg 317] and those alone, who were perfect in knowledge were partakers of it728.
In most cases the Redemption was effected during the lifetime of those who were made partakers of it; but the dead were not excluded. The rite was administered immediately after death.
In all cases the effect of it was to enable the initiated to escape the power of the Creator and his angels, and, leaving their souls behind them, to enter into the Fulness729.
Gnosticism is now well-nigh forgotten, or noticed only by those who are led to an acquaintance with it either by its connexion with certain passages in the New Testament, or by a systematic study of the early Fathers of the Church. And yet it existed in the world, and spread over the civilized portions of it as a system of philosophy at a time when heathen speculation had attained its highest refinement, and Christianity had introduced certainty to take the [pg 318] place of speculation. But that it should have taken hold on the minds of men to such an extent and at such a time, is surely one of the most unaccountable facts in the history of the human mind. To us, even the Platonic system would appear so much more rational and intelligible, and the Christian doctrine so much more simple and natural, and, if I may so say, manly, that in their presence one wonders what there could have been to recommend Gnosticism. The Grecian schemes were so many efforts of unassisted reason to find out truth by simple speculation. They could therefore never be propounded as certainties, but only as probabilities. They accordingly rested on their probability, and struck out many truths. They bear about them the air of the conclusions of men searching after truth, and having in some degree attained it. Christianity, on the other hand, professed to be a revelation from above. It did not pretend to speculate or to reason; it taught its doctrines as infallible truths, and supported its teaching by miracles, and an appeal to fulfilled prophecy. Gnosticism was like neither. It was in fact gratuitous speculation, founded upon nothing but the fact of a great difficulty, which human reason had never yet solved, the causation of evil; but it claimed no support from reason; it propounded no proofs; but put itself forward as the revealed solution of this difficulty. It wrought miracles, indeed, which might have served where the [pg 319] Christian miracles were unknown, but poor and weak indeed to put in competition with them, for they were mere juggles. They answered no beneficial end; they were over in a few minutes; they submitted themselves to no daily and hourly proof; and although professing to support a higher and purer God than was ever before thought of, they were of the same nature as those practised by heathen sorcerers. But to have solved this great difficulty, the system ought at least to have been uniform, or at most progressive. No teacher should have contradicted another, however much he might improve upon him. And yet this was far from being the case. The various successive teachers not only pulled down what their predecessors had set up, but even contemporary leaders contradicted each other. This would have been perfectly consistent if they had set up as mere speculators; but they claimed a sort of inspiration; nay, whilst setting aside the Gospel, they claimed support from the Gospel; whilst making higher pretensions than they allowed the Apostles, they professed to have a tradition received from the Apostles; whilst utterly overthrowing the religion of Christ, they appealed to his words and teaching as supporting them.
But although borrowing support from Christianity, it was not itself in any sense a religion. It taught no present devotion towards any superior being. It [pg 320] had no offerings, no prayers, still less any expiations. Although some of its teachers practised rites borrowed from the eucharist, they had no religious object. They were mere juggles. Although the idea of glorifying the beings above entered into the system, yet it affected only the beings above man, or man after he quitted this state. It had no place on earth. This was a place of discipline, or training, for a state in which he was to glorify the great First Cause; but he had nothing to do with glorifying him here. The great object of man here was knowledge. In this respect it was analogous to the Grecian philosophies; for they had no connection with religion, but were rather antagonists to it. They tended to overthrow the heathen superstitions, but they furnished nothing to replace them. They taught, it may be, moral duties; but it was not upon any principles of religion, but rather of social benefit. They attained to better notions on the unity and nature of God than were entertained by their compatriots, but they led not to a purer worship of him. At best they refined and mysticized the mythology and religious observances of the old religions. In this respect, then, of being unconnected with religion, it was like the philosophical systems of its own and former times; but it went further than they in being essentially irreligious, by placing the perfection of man in knowledge, and that only. By this means the necessity of religion of any kind was totally done [pg 321] away. Curiosity was substituted for devotion, and unbounded liberty for duty, whether to God or to man.
Curiosity being thus canonized, it is remarkable that the Gnostic system had baits for almost every description of it. It is curiosity, the desire of knowing what others know, fully as much as passion and appetite, which leads men into the various descriptions of vice; and this species of curiosity was not only allowed, but even sanctioned and stimulated. Men were told that it was the express destiny of every one who was to be perfect, to know everything that could be known in this world; and not only that, but that if a person failed of acquiring the requisite knowledge in one lifetime, his soul must pass into another and another body, until it had arrived at the necessary degree of information. It is true that this implied, in its literal meaning, the knowledge of good as well as of evil. But it requires little acquaintance with human nature to tell us in what sense it would be most commonly taken. And if any scruples still remained, they were removed by the doctrine that all actions were naturally indifferent, and that nothing but human opinion, or the arbitrary will of a tyrannical being, the Jewish God, had ever made any such thing as moral distinctions. Thus a vicious curiosity became a duty, if such a term had been allowable in Gnosticism; or, at all [pg 322] events, that man who did not foster and indulge it to the utmost, was fighting against his own interest.
There is another kind of curiosity, which has governed many in all ages, and which is not even yet extinct, and that is, a desire to be acquainted with future or unknown circumstances, or to possess a power beyond the reach of ordinary men. There have been always those who have professed themselves possessors of this supernatural knowledge, and of course others who have desired either to possess it or to witness and profit by its exercise. From this desire has arisen the whole of magic from the beginning, and the science of astrology in particular. Accordingly, this was a marked feature in many of the Gnostic teachers, that they laid claim to magical powers; and herein they differed from the heathen philosophers, and became the antagonists of the Christian apostles. Simon Magus, for instance, who is generally reckoned the first Gnostic leader, was a magician, and there is great reason to suspect that his faith was more a reliance on the Apostles, on the supposition of their having some deeper art than his own, than the faith of the heart in the principles of the Gospel.
But there is another class of persons who could neither be imposed on by the pretensions to supernatural power, nor the seductions of evil appetites, [pg 323] whose cast of character is altogether intellectual, and whose temptations must therefore be intellectual. The attention of such persons had in all ages been directed to the unseen things of creation, the invisible springs of all earthly motions and actions, the secret agencies of nature, the nature of the Great Original of all things, the methods of his providential government, the time and manner of the creation, the origin of evil, the future state of mankind after their departure from this earthly scene. Questions of this kind had engaged the curiosity of minds of the higher order ever since civilization began, and no system could find acceptance with them which offered no solution of such questions. Gnosticism accordingly furnished food for the curiosity of these, and that in greater abundance than any other system yet invented.
Besides the Gentile speculatists, there was also the philosophical Jew, who had become acquainted with the Grecian learning, and had thus come to endeavour to account, upon new principles, for the economy of the divine government under the law; partly for his own satisfaction, partly to render it palatable to his heathen friends. Two points in his law would present difficulty: first, the endless forms and ceremonies considered with reference to God, who, being a spirit, would require a spiritual worship, [pg 324] (for this is a truth which this class of Jews were fully sensible of,) together with the prohibitions of various animals; and secondly, the severities which God himself exercised and taught their forefathers to exercise against idolaters. And no doubt many Jews of this class were become practically unbelievers by speculating upon points which their forefathers implicitly received and devoutly practised.
There was again another class; viz. Christians by birth and education, brought up in leisure, and given to study, who, never having received the Gospel humbly and practically, became infected with the unsettled spirit of speculative inquiry. These would see the apparent incongruities between the law and the Gospel, especially in the spirit in which each was administered; and instead of being contented to be ignorant of that which had not been revealed, would endeavour to form some system independent of revelation, by which to account for these incongruities. To these two classes we shall see that Gnosticism also adapted itself; and indeed to the latter it would be specially adapted in the licentiousness of its morals. For being brought up without their own choice in a system of great strictness, at which their nature perhaps rebelled, and which they had themselves never heartily embraced; and yet not liking to renounce it on the distinct avowal [pg 325] of a love of vice, they would gladly close with a scheme which gave unbounded license the character of superior wisdom, and even of duty itself.
We see then what there was in the character of the times to prepare men for such a system as Gnosticism. But it did not grow up at once into all its completeness. It developed itself by degrees, as men were prepared for it; and when we have considered it in its leading features, we can scarcely fail to acquiesce in the view of it taken by the Christian writers contemporary with it; viz. that it was a scheme specially concocted by the author of evil, as antagonist to Christianity.
Simon Magus, as all agree, was the first teacher of Gnosticism; and when he first appeared in that character in Samaria, it is obvious that he could have known but little of the Gospel, and this may account for the little notice taken of it in his system. He came as the great power of God, that is, as God manifested on earth; and he wrought pretended miracles in confirmation of his pretensions. It is remarkable that none of his successors made any such pretension as this, although they too, at least some of them, professed miraculous power. He was therefore the antagonist of Christ; strictly Antichrist, in a higher sense than any other. He taught that the God of the Jews was not truly God, but only, [pg 326] like the Jupiter of heathenism, one of a set of angelic powers; that the Supreme God had nothing to do with the origination of evil further than that he had created those angelic powers from whom it had sprung; nay, that he had not created them directly, but by his thought, which, taking a personal character, was the actual Creator of these; that therefore the Supreme Being had nothing to do with anything in this world, excepting in so far as he had interfered to remedy the mischief occasioned by the angels. It was in this way that he endeavoured to reconcile the imperfections of this world with the perfection of God. But he went further than this; for by making the Creator of this world and the God of the Old Testament an imperfect being, he in reality denied God, whilst professing to know more of him than other men.
This part of the system only accounted for physical evil, and such moral evils as oppression and violence: but moral evil, as we commonly understand it, he treated in quite a different way; i. e. by denying that it was evil at all; for he asserted that it was so only through the tyrannical imposition of the angels. Nay, he even went so far as to assert that he himself was God, come down from above to rescue men from their thraldom by teaching them the truth of things; and thus to restore them to their rightful liberty, by showing them that they might [pg 327] do whatever they listed, and indeed ought to do so to vindicate his authority, which had been usurped by the angels. A more plausible scheme of blasphemy and licentiousness could scarcely have been concocted for the philosophizing Jew, or the heathen who had looked into Judaism merely as a rival system of barbarian philosophy. It recognised all the facts of the Old Testament; but it totally neutralized them, and destroyed altogether the religion with which they would have appeared to be inseparably blended.
When Christianity began to spread, and Jesus was believed on by multitudes, and reverenced by many who did not receive him, it became politic to recognise the Gospel in the same manner in which the Law had been recognised. Accordingly, the external facts of the life of Jesus were not disputed, but a new spirit was given to them. Jesus was a manifestation of the Supreme God, as Simon was; come upon the same errand, to destroy the Jewish law; and thence an object of hatred to the Jews, who triumphed so far as to crucify the external body in which he appeared, but had no power over him who had inhabited it. Here there was just enough of truth to impose upon a person brought up to believe the Gospel without really loving it, and falsehood enough altogether to prevent its reception.
The sketch which I have now traced is the nucleus [pg 328] of Gnosticism. Simon's dignifying his paramour with the title of the Thought of the First Cause, and his figment of her having been in a perpetual state of transmigration, was no doubt an after thought to cover the grossness which prying minds might fancy in the great empiric; an end which might not be sufficiently accomplished by his doctrine that all actions were indifferent.
Whether Simon really invented the first ogdoad of pure emanations from the Great Father may be doubted; for the testimony to that fact does not appear sufficiently early, and those who assert it contradict each other in the names of them. But that he taught that there were Excellences and Powers, as well as angels, appears from Irenæus. Yet as that author undertakes to tell the share which Simon had in forming the system, and certainly attributes the regularity of it to his successors, it appears most probable that he defined nothing as to the number or functions of those celestial beings.
The sketch, however, of Simon, to whatever extent he went, was sufficiently filled up by his successors. In his system of angelic beings they defined their number, and to a certain extent fixed their functions. There was at last a body of these formed between the Supreme Being and the authors of this world, perfect in holiness and obedience. [pg 329] The defection of one of these was made as much as possible the work of accident. She was made, according to various schemes, sometimes to be totally excluded from this perfect society, sometimes to be restored to it again, leaving an imperfect offspring behind her. From her or her offspring, sprang the Creator, who is sometimes represented as the chief of seven angels, sometimes as a peculiar being having the angels under him. The creation of man is represented as the work of this imperfect being, but the spark of heavenly life in him as an emanation, more or less direct, from the First Cause. In this way the scheme became more definite; but from the same cause it became a set of schemes more or less inconsistent with each other, but all aiming at having a succession of mysteries to be communicated by degrees. In this way the minds of men were amused and tantalized, and prevented from a serious search after truth; whilst if one scheme was searched to the bottom, and its stock of mysteries exhausted, there was still another and another refinement to lure him away from the real truth. There was, however, the uniform tendency to remove the government of this world from the cognizance of the Supreme Being, and to represent the author of the law and the prophets as an imperfect, self-contradictory, cruel being. There was the same mode of rendering null the distinction between moral good and evil, by attributing it to opinion, or [pg 330] custom, or the ordinance of the God of this world. There was the same attempt to nullify the Gospel, by doing away with the Christian idea of the incarnate Son of God, and representing the advent of Jesus as a portion of the Gnostic scheme. For whether Jesus was considered as only apparently a man, or as merely a man; whether the Saviour dwelt in him or made use of him; whether it were the Saviour, or the Christ, or the Only-begotten, or the Jesus above, who interested himself for the redemption of the spiritual seed, it all amounted to the same thing in the end. It abolished the real salvation of the soul; it took away the incarnation and atonement; it made the Gospel of no effect.
The nature of the redemption it preached was likewise everywhere the same. It was not a redemption from the dominion of sin, but by denying that there was any such thing as sin. Whether it taught that the simple practical knowledge of this fact was all the redemption necessary, or that some initiatory rite was requisite to give that knowledge, or that a full knowledge of the Gnostic theory was to be superadded to qualify for eternal redemption,—whether it led its votaries to defy the God of the Old Testament, or taught them mystic forms by which to elude him when sitting in judgment, it all amounted to the same thing. Lewdness of the grossest kind was denied to be any sin. There were, [pg 331] indeed, some who embraced the general theory, and with it believed that the flesh, as being the work of the Creator, was to be denied and mortified in every way, and who therefore decried marriage730 itself, and forbad to eat flesh; but they were the few. The opposite use of the undervaluing of the flesh was the more popular and the more prevalent.
Hitherto, perhaps, there has appeared but little in common with our own times; but there were other features of Gnosticism, in which it will appear to have been the parent of Antinomianism, even that of the most recent days. If any one is at all familiar with the high Calvinism of Toplady and his school, he will have found that it strongly resembled the Gnosticism of the age of Irenæus. It is of the essence of strict Calvinism to teach that individuals are inevitably destined to salvation; and so it was in Gnosticism. The spiritual seed must all be brought back again from earthly degradation; none can fail of being so, first or last. It may be destined to numerous transmigrations; but the spirit must finally be wafted upward to the eternal Fulness731. Again, the spiritual pride and presumption of the genuine Antinomian is a very observable trait: his speaking [pg 332] of all as carnal who do not adopt his scheme; his placing religion not in holiness, but in knowing the truth; his assumption of superior illumination; his declarations that none but those specially favoured are capable of knowing the truth; all this is merely a repetition of Gnosticism. The Gnostic called himself spiritual, and the Churchman carnal732; he was the elect and perfect, and the orthodox the ignorant and simple733; he derived his very name from his making knowledge paramount to all other things734; he declared that none were capable of receiving his scheme but the spiritual seed735; that to others good works were necessary and useful736, but that their lot, however praiseworthy, could never be the same as that of the elect737. So, again, the abuse of the doctrine of justification by faith is as early as those times. They declared that faith and love was the sum of their religion738; that the law might be a restraint suited to inferior natures, but that to them it would be a degradation to submit their minds to its yoke; and that, in fact, whatever acts they might commit, it was impossible for them either to be polluted by those acts or to fail of salvation739. Who would not suppose that the modern ultra-Calvinist was the speaker? So again, at that time, as in these days [pg 333] these tenets were not always taken up as a cloak for licentiousness. Saturninus and Tatian were extremely correct in their lives; and Valentinus was not accused of any peculiar immorality: indeed, he long continued nominally a member of the Church, which, if his conduct had been flagitious, he could not have done. If they despised the restraints of the moral law, they probably supposed, like Toplady and others, that they had higher principles, which would lead them to greater heights of purity: or they were men of a speculative turn, who took up Gnosticism as a theory, without any disposition to make that practical use of it which others did, merely because they were not persons of warm passions. Indeed, if we may judge from a fragment preserved by Clement of Alexandria, Valentinus was rather a mystic in his religion740.
There are two or three features in which the Gnostics were the forerunners of a very different class of errors. Transubstantiation no doubt arose in time by a natural depravation of the true doctrine of the Eucharist, through the desire of defining that which Scripture and primitive tradition had left undefined. But it is curious that a hint of it should have been struck out by Marcus, one of the magical Gnostics, who, amongst other arts of legerdemain, [pg 334] hit upon the idea of bringing down into the wine and water the blood of the supernal grace, by means of an invocation741. It is equally curious to read in the account of Carpocrates and his disciples, that they asserted that Pilate had procured a likeness of Jesus Christ to be taken, and that they set his image amongst those of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Aristotle and the rest, and decked it with chaplets, and paid to it the selfsame honours which the heathen paid to their idols742. Nor is it less remarkable that the Gnostics in general, when refuted by the Scriptures, should have spoken in disparagement of them (as I have already pointed out) in terms singularly corresponding with those sometimes made use of by Roman controversialists: “They turn to accuse the Scriptures, as though they were not correct, nor of authority; and say that they are at variance with themselves, neither can the truth be discovered from them by those who are ignorant of their tradition743.” Coincidences of this kind are at least curious; and the further we search the more clearly will it appear that the germs of all subsequent errors appeared in very early times.