Note 49 — Chapter VII · ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY AND ITS OPPONENTS

Such was the relative freethought of credulous theosophic fantasy,49 turning fictitious data to fresh purpose by way of solving the riddle of the painful earth. The problem was to account for evil consistently with a Good God; and the orientals, inheriting a dualistic religion, adapted that; while the Egyptians, inheriting a syncretic monotheism, set up grades of Powers between the All-Ruler and men, on the model of the grades between the Autocrat, ancient or modern, and his subjects. The Manichæans, the most thoroughly organized of all the outside sects, appear to have absorbed many of the adherents of the great Mithraic religion, and held together for centuries, despite fierce persecution and hostile propaganda, their influence subsisting till the Middle Ages.50 The other Gnosticisms fared much worse. Lacking sacred books, often setting up a severe ethic as against the frequently loose practice of the churches,51 and offering a creed unsuited to the general populace, all alike passed away before the competition of the organized Church, which founded on the Canon52 and the concrete dogmas, with many pagan rites and beliefs53 and a few great pagan abracadabras added.