there was a man called Jesus, the son of human parents, they believed that one of the Eons, called Christ, quitted the Pleroma, and descended upon Jesus at his baptism. It is not difficult to see how the scriptures would be perverted to support both these notions: though if we are right in assigning so early a date to the rise of Gnosticism, it was rather the preaching of the apostles, which was perverted, than their written doctrines: and from what was stated in my former Lecture, concerning the progress of the gospel in distant countries which the apostles had not yet visited, we can easily understand, that truth would be mixed with error, and that the mysterious doctrines would be most likely to suffer from the contact.

We have seen, that the God, who was the father or progenitor of Christ, was not considered to be the creator of the world. Neither was he the God of the Old Testament, and the giver of the Mosaic law. This notion was supported by the same arguments which infidels have often urged, that the God of the Jews is represented as a God of vengeance and of cruelty: but it was also a natural consequence of their fundamental principle, that the author of good cannot in any manner be the author of evil. In accordance with this notion, we find all the Gnostics agreed in rejecting the Jewish scriptures, or at least in treating them with contempt. Since they held, that the supreme God was revealed for the first time to mankind by Christ, he could not have been the God who inspired the prophets : and yet with that strange inconsistency, which we have already observed in them, they appealed to these very scriptures in support of their own doc

trines. They believed the prophets to have been inspired by the same creative Eon, or the same Principle of evil, which acted originally upon matter: and if their writings had come down to us, we should perhaps find them arguing, that though the prophets were not inspired by the supreme God, they still could not help giving utterance to truths.

Their same abhorrence of matter, and their same notion concerning that purity of knowledge, which Christ came upon earth to impart, led them to reject the Christian doctrines of a future resurrection and a general judgment. They seem to have understood the apostles as preaching literally a resurrection of the body: and it is certain, that the Fathers insisted upon this very strongly as an article of belief. But to imagine, that the body, a mass of created and corruptible matter, could ever enter into heaven, into that Pleroma which was the dwelling of the supreme God, was a notion which violated the fundamental principle of the Gnostics. According to their scheme, no resurrection was necessary, much less a final judgment. The Gnostic, the man who had attained to perfect knowledge, was gradually emancipated from the grossness of matter, and by an imperceptible transition, which none but a Gnostic could comprehend, he was raised to be an inhabitant of the divine Pleroma.

If we would know the effect, which the doctrines of the Gnostics had upon their moral conduct, we shall find that the same principle led to two very opposite results. Though the Fathers may have exaggerated the errors of their opponents, it seems undeniable, that many Gnostics led profligate lives, and maintained upon principle that such conduct was

not unlawful. Others again are represented as practising great austerities, and endeavouring by every means to mortify the body and its sensual appetites. Both parties were actuated by the same common notion, that matter is inherently evil. The one thought that the body, which is compounded of matter, ought to be kept in subjection; and hence they inculcated self-denial, and the practice of moral virtue: while others, who had persuaded themselves that knowledge was every thing, despised the distinctions of the moral law, which was given, as they said, not by the supreme God, but by an inferior Eon, or a principle of evil, who had allied himself with matter.

Such are the leading doctrines of the Gnostics, both concerning their theology and their moral practice. The sketch, which I have given, is short and imperfect; and a system of mysticism, which is always difficult to be explained, is rendered still more obscure when we have to extract it from the writings of its opponents. The system, as I have said, was stated to have begun with Simon Magus; by which I would understand, that the system of uniting Christianity with Gnosticism began with that heretich for the seeds of Gnosticism, as we shall see presently, had been sown long before. What Simon Magus began, was brought nearly to perfection by Valentinus, who came to Rome in the former part of the second century: and what we know of Gnosticism, is taken principally from writers who opposed Valentinus. Contemporary with him there were many other Gnostic leaders, who held different opin

See Siricius, de Simone Mago, Disq. I. Thes. 65. p. 58.

ions: but in the sketch, which I have given, I have endeavoured to explain those principles, which under certain modifications were common to all the Gnostics. That the supreme God, or the Good Principle, was not the Creator of the world, but that it was created by an evil, or at least by an inferior Being; that God produced from himself a succession of Æons, or Emanations, who dwelt with him in the Pleroma; that one of these ons was Christ, who came upon earth to reveal the knowledge of the true God; that he was not incarnate, but either assumed an unsubstantial body, or descended upon Jesus at his baptism; that the God of the Old Testament was not the father of Jesus Christ; and that the prophets were not inspired by the supreme God; that there was no resurrection or final judgment; this is an outline of the Gnostic tenets, as acknowledged by nearly all of them; and it will be my object to consider whether there are allusions to these doctrines in the apostolic writings.

These writings are in fact the only contemporary documents to which we can appeal for the first century. The brief Epistles of Ignatius may contain a few facts connected with the end of that century, and the beginning of the next; and the writings of Justin Martyr, (though his work directed expressly against Marcion and other heretics is unfortunately losti,) may throw light upon many points disputed between the Christians and the Gnostics. But the work of Irenæus, which was intended as an answer to all heresies, and entitled, with a manifest reference

iJustin himself says, ἔστι δὲ ἡμῖν καὶ σύνταγμα κατὰ πασῶν τῶν γεγενημένων αἱρέσεων συντεταγμέ

νον.

Apol. I. 26. p. 60. The first Apology was written about the year 140.

to the words of St. Paul, (1 Tim. vi. 20.) a Detection and refutation of knowledge falsely so called, is the great storehouse from which we draw our information concerning the Gnostics. Most probably a native, and certainly an inhabitant of Asia Minor in the early part of his life, Irenæus could well judge of the Gnostic doctrines, which, as we shall see, were received with peculiar eagerness in that country. Having been instructed in Christianity by Polycarp, who was the immediate disciple of St. John, he would not only know what were the true doctrines of the gospel, but the points also in which St. John thought those doctrines to be most in danger from the corruptions of the Gnostics. Being afterwards removed to the bishopric of Lyons in Gaul, he would have ample opportunity to observe the heresies which infested the western churches: and all these advantages, added to the qualifications of his own mind, which seems to have been acute and amply stored, give a value to his authority, which can hardly be attached to the works of later writers. Tertullian at the end of the second century wrote many elaborate refutations of the early heresies: and his works will be studied with more attention, because he belonged to another great division of the Christian church, the African, and in different quarters of the world heresies might naturally assume very different aspects. We should look perhaps with particular interest to the Fathers of the Alexandrian church: not only from the fact, that the catechetical schools of that city were particularly distinguished; but because Alexandria and Egypt, as we shall see presently, were the great promoters of the Platonic doctrines, with which those of the Gnostics were closely con