Chapter X · THE SYSTEM OF THE PISTIS SOPHIA AND ITS RELATED TEXTS[459] (continued 2)

Meanwhile, the bridge between Paganism and Christianity which Gnosticism afforded had been crossed by many. As the Ophites showed the inhabitants of Asia Minor how to combine the practice of their ancestral worships with the Christian revelation, so Valentinus and his successors allowed the rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven without the difficulties attendant on the passage of the camel through the needle’s eye. The authors of the Texts of the Saviour and the Bruce Papyrus went further and made it possible for the Egyptian fellah—then as now hating change, and most tenacious of his own beliefs—to accept the hope of salvation offered by the new faith while giving up none of his traditional lore upon the nature of the next world. In this way, doubtless, many thousands were converted to Christianity who would otherwise have kept aloof from it, and thus hastened its triumph over the State. But the law which seems to compel every religion to borrow the weapons of its adversaries leads sometimes to strange results, and this was never more plainly marked than in the case of Egypt. The history of Egyptian Christianity has yet to be written; but it seems from the first to have been distinguished in many important particulars from that which conquered the West, and it is impossible to attribute these differences to any other source than Gnosticism. The Pharaonic Egyptian had always been fanatical, submissive like all Africans to priestly influence, and easily absorbed in concern for his own spiritual welfare. Given the passion for defining the undefinable and the love of useless detail which marked everything in the old faith, and in systems like those of the Coptic texts which form the subject of this chapter he had the religion to his mind. Nor were other and less abstract considerations wanting. The life of a scribe or temple servant, as the race began to lose the vigour which at one time had made them the conquerors of Asia, had come to be looked upon 201by the mass of the people as that which was most desirable on earth^[680]; and here was a faith which called upon the Egyptian to withdraw from the world and devote himself to the care of his own soul. Hence the appeal of Gnosticism to those who would escape hell to renounce all earthly cares fell upon good ground, and Egypt was soon full of ignorant ascetics withdrawn from the life of labour and spending their days in ecstasy or contemplation until roused to seditious or turbulent action at the bidding of their crafty and ambitious leaders. For these monks and hermits the Hellenistic civilization might as well not have existed; but they preserved their native superstitions without much modification, and the practices of magic, alchemy, and divination were rife among them^[681]. So, too, was the constant desire to enquire into the nature and activities of the Deity which they had brought with them from their old faith, and which nearly rent Christianity in twain when it found expression in the Arian, the Monophysite, and the Monothelite controversies. In the meantime, the Catholic Church had profoundly modified her own methods in the directions which the experience of the Gnostics had shown to be profitable. The fear of hell came to occupy a larger and larger part in her exhortations, and apocalypse after apocalypse was put forth in which its terrors were set out with abundant detail. Ritual necessarily became of immense importance under the pressure of converts who believed in the magical efficacy of prayers and sacraments, in which every word and every gesture was of mysterious import, and the rites of the Church were regarded more and more as secrets on which only those fully instructed might look. The use in them of pictures, flowers, incense, music, and all the externals of the public worship of heathen times, which according to Gibbon would have shocked a Tertullian or a Lactantius could they have returned to earth^[682], must be attributed in the first instance 202to the influence of Gnostic converts. Renan is doubtless right when he says that it was over the bridge between Paganism and Christianity formed by Gnosticism that many Pagan practices poured into the Church^[683].

Apart from these external matters, on the other hand, the outbreak of Gnosticism possibly rendered a real service to Christianity. To the simple chiliastic faith of Apostolic times, the Gnostics added the elements which transformed it into a world-religion, fitted to triumph over all the older creeds and worships; and their stealthy and in part secret opposition forced the Church to adopt the organization which has enabled her to survive in unimpaired strength to the present day. Jewish Christianity, the religion of the few pious and humble souls who thought they had nothing to do but to wait in prayer and hope for their Risen Lord, had proved itself unable to conquer the world, and its adherents under the name of Ebionites were already looked upon by the Gentile converts as heretics. Gnosticism, so long as it was unchecked, was a real danger to the Church, but without it Christendom would probably have broken up into hundreds of small independent communities, and would thus have dissipated the strength which she eventually found in unity. Threatened on the one hand by this danger, and on the other with the loss of popular favour which the attractions of Gnosticism made probable, the Church was forced to organize herself, to define her doctrines, to establish a regular and watchful hierarchy^[684], and to strictly regulate the tendency to mystic speculation and arbitrary exegesis which she could not wholly suppress. Yet these measures could not come into operation without producing a reaction, the end of which we have yet to see.

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