Chapter VII · POST-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS

It will be seen, from what has been said in the first volume, that, even at the beginning of the Christian era, there was no lack of αἵρεσις or choice of creeds offered to those peoples of the Levant who had outgrown their national religions; and it may be a surprise to many that more notice was not taken by the Christians of the Apostolic age of these early essays at a universal faith. Some writers, indeed, among whom Bishop Lightfoot is perhaps the most notable, have thought that they could detect allusions to them in the Canonical writings, and that by the “worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which man hath not seen, vainly puffed up by the understanding of his flesh^[1]” which St Paul condemns in the Epistle to the Colossians, must be understood the teachings of Gnostic sects already in existence^[2]. Others have gone further, and think that the Fourth Gospel was itself written under Gnostic influence^[3], and that the Apocalypse attributed to the same author vituperates under the name of the Nicolaitans a Christian sect professing Gnostic tenets^[4]. Even if this be so, however, the comparatively late date assigned to all these documents^[5] must prevent their being received as 2evidence of what happened in the earliest stage of the Christian Church; and we find no proof that Gnosticism ever seriously competed for popular favour with orthodox Christianity until well into the IInd century^[6]. That the first Christians would take little heed either of organized religions like that of the Alexandrian divinities, or of the speculations of the Orphic poets and of such sects as the Simonians is plain, when we consider the way in which their expectation of the Parusia or Second Coming dominated every moment of their lives^[7]. They believed with the unquestioning faith of children that their dead Master would presently return to the earth, and that it would then be destroyed to make way for a new state of things in which, while the majority of mankind would be condemned to everlasting fire, His followers should taste all the joys of Paradise. With this before their eyes, they turned, as has been said, their possessions into a common fund^[8], they bound themselves together in a strict association for mutual help and comfort, and they set to work to sweep their fellows into the Christian fold with an earnestness and an energy that was the fiercer because the time for its exercise was thought to be so short. “The Lord is at hand and His reward,” a saying which seems to have been a password among them^[9], was an idea never absent from their minds, and the result was an outburst of proselytism such as the world till then had never seen.

“They saw,” says a writer who was under no temptation to exaggerate the charity and zeal of the primitive Church, “their fathers and mothers, their sisters and their dearest friends, hurrying onward to that fearful pit, laughing and singing, lured on by the fiends whom they called the gods. They felt as we should feel were we to see a blind man walking towards a river bank.... Who that could hope to save a soul by tears and supplications would remain quiescent 3as men do now?.... In that age every Christian was a missionary. The soldier sought to win recruits for the heavenly host; the prisoner of war discoursed to his Persian jailer; the slave girl whispered the gospel in the ears of her mistress as she built up the mass of towered hair; there stood men in cloak and beard at street corners who, when the people, according to the manners of the day, invited them to speak, preached, not the doctrines of the Painted Porch, but the words of a new and strange philosophy; the young wife threw her arms round her husband’s neck and made him agree to be baptised, that their souls might not be parted after death^[10]....”

How could people thus preoccupied be expected to concern themselves with theories of the origin of a world about to perish, or with the philosophic belief that all the gods of the nations were but varying forms of one supreme and kindly power?

Before the end of the Ist century, however, this belief in the immediate nearness of the Second Coming had died away^[11]. The promise that the second Gospel puts into the mouth of Jesus that some of His hearers should not taste of death until they saw the Son of Man come with power^[12], had become incapable of fulfilment by the death of the last of those who had listened to Him. Nor were all the converts to the faith which His immediate disciples had left behind them possessed with the same simple faith and mental equipment as themselves^[13]. To the poor fishermen and peasants of Judaea had succeeded the slaves and freedmen of great houses—including even Caesar’s own,—some of them professionally versed in the philosophy of the time, and all with a greater or less acquaintance with the religious beliefs of the non-Jewish citizens of the great Roman Empire^[14]. The preachings and journeys of St Paul and other missionaries had also brought into the Christian Church many believers of other than Jewish blood, together with the foreign 4merchants and members of the Jewish communities scattered throughout the Roman world, who were better able than the Jews of Palestine to appreciate the stability and the organized strength of the Roman Empire and to desire an alliance with it. To ask such men, deeply engaged as many of them were in the pursuit of wealth, to join in the temporary communism and other-worldliness practised by the first Christian Church would have been as futile as to expect the great Jewish banking-houses of the present day to sell all that they have and give it to the poor.

Another cause that profoundly altered the views of the early Christian communities must have been the catastrophe and final dispersion of the Jewish nation. Up to the time of the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem under Titus, the Christians not only regarded themselves as Jews^[15], but were looked upon by such of the other subjects of Rome as had happened to have heard of them, as merely one sect the more of a race always factious and given to internal dissensions. Yet even in St Paul’s time, the Christians were exposed to a bitter persecution at the hands of those orthodox Jews who seemed to the Gentile world to be their co-religionists^[16], and it is probable that in the outbreak of fanaticism attending the first Jewish war, they suffered severely at the hands of both combatants^[17]. The burning of the Temple must also have been a crushing blow to all who looked for a literal and immediate fulfilment of the 5Messianic hope, and its result was to further accentuate the difference between the Christians and the Jews^[18]. Moreover, the hatred and scorn felt by these last for all other members of the human race had now been recognized by the Gentiles^[19], and the repeated insurrections attempted by the Jews between the time of Titus and the final war of extermination under Hadrian showed that these feelings were shared by the Jewish communities outside Palestine^[20]. It was therefore not at all the time which worldly-wise and prudent men, as many of the later Christian converts were, would choose for identifying themselves with a race which not only repudiated the relationship in the most practical way, but had lately exposed themselves on other grounds to the deserved execration of the civilized world.

It is, then, by no means surprising that some of the new converts should have begun to look about them for some compromise between their recently acquired convictions and the religious beliefs of the Graeco-Roman world in which they had been brought up, and they found this ready to their hand in the pre-Christian sects which we have ventured above to class together under the generic name of Gnostic. In the Orphic poems, they found the doctrine of successive ages of the world, each with its different characteristics, which coincided well enough with the repeated declaration of the Christians that the old world was passing away,—as was indeed the fact 6since the conquests of Alexander^[21]. They found, too, both in the Orphic poems and in the mixed religions like that of the Alexandrian divinities which had sprung from the doctrines taught by these poems, the legend of a god dying and rising again for the salvation of mankind told in a way which had many analogies with the Gospel narratives of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus^[22]. Among the Essenes, too, who may have owed, as has been said above, some of their doctrines to Orphic inspiration, they found all the modest virtues of sobriety, chastity, and mutual help which had already distinguished the Christian Church above all the other religious associations of the time. And among both the Orphics and the Essenes was to be noticed the strained and fanciful system of interpretation by allegory and figure which enabled them to put their own construction upon the words not only of the books of the Jewish Canon, but of those writings which had begun to circulate among the scattered Christian communities as containing the authentic teaching of Jesus and His immediate disciples^[23]. Add to this that the Simonians, and no doubt other pre-Christian Gnostic sects of which we have lost all trace, had already shown the mixed populations of the Levant how to reconcile the innovations of a teacher of impressive and commanding personality with their own ancestral traditions^[24], and that the many mysteries then diffused throughout the ancient world 7offered a ready means of propagating new doctrines under cover of secrecy; and it will be seen that most of the sources from which the founders of the great post-Christian sects afterwards drew their systems were then lying open and ready to hand.

The prize which awaited success was, moreover, no mean one. It is sometimes said that the only distinction that awaited a leader of the Church at this time was the distinction of being burned alive^[25]. Yet the fear of impeachment to be followed by a still more horrible death never prevented English statesmen in the XVIIth century from struggling with each other for place and power; while the State had not as yet made any serious attempt to suppress the propagation of Christianity by force. On the other hand, a Christian bishop, even at this early date, occupied a position which was really superior to that of most functionaries of the secular State. Gifted with almost complete power over his flock in temporal as well as in spiritual matters, he was at once their judge and their adviser; and, so long as there were Pagan emperors on the throne, the faithful were forbidden to come to any tribunal but his^[26]. His judgments, too, had a greater sanction than those of any temporal judge; for while he could not indeed lawfully condemn any of his hearers to death, he had in the sentence of excommunication which he alone could pronounce, the power of cutting them off from eternal life. The adoration with which he was regarded by them also surpassed the respect paid to proconsul or legate^[27]; and the literature of the time is full of allusions to the way in which, when brought before the temporal rulers, he was attended 8by weeping multitudes who crowded round him even in prison, imploring his blessing and kissing his fetters^[28]. Hence it is not to be wondered at that such a position was eagerly sought after, that envy of the episcopate was the principal sin against which the Christian writers of the sub-Apostolic age warned their readers^[29], and that it is to the disappointment at failing to attain the highest places in the orthodox Church that they ascribe the foundation of all the principal post-Christian sects^[30]. Without taking this accusation as literally correct, it is plain that the chance of irresponsible power over those whom they could convince must have proved a most alluring bait to religious-minded persons who were also ambitious and intellectual men of the world^[31].

Thus it came about that during the IInd and IIIrd centuries, there arose more than one teacher who set himself to construct a system which should enable its votaries to retain the Hellenistic culture which Alexander’s conquests had spread throughout the whole civilized world with the religious and moral ideas which the enthusiasm and energy of the first Christians had begun to diffuse among the lower classes of citizens^[32]. Alexandria, the natural meeting-place between the East and West, was no 9doubt the scene of the first of these attempts, and the writings of Philo, fortunately still extant, had already shown the way in which the allegorical system of interpretation could be used to this end. That many of the founders of post-Christian Gnostic sects were Alexandrian Jews is the constant tradition of the Christian Church, and is antecedently probable enough^[33]. But other Gnostic leaders were certainly not Alexandrians and came from centres sufficiently distant from Egypt to show that the phenomenon was very widely spread, and that the same causes produced the same results in the most distant places and entirely outside the Jewish community. Marcion, the founder of the Marcionite Church, was a native of Pontus. Saturnilus or Saturninus—the name is spelt differently by Irenaeus and Hippolytus—came from Antioch, Theodotus from Byzantium, others, such as Cerdo, and probably Prepon the Syrian, began teaching in Rome, while we hear of a certain Monoimus, who is said to have been an Arab^[34]. Most of these are to us merely names, only very brief summaries of the different systems founded or professed by them having been preserved in the heresiologies compiled by the Fathers of the Church both before and immediately after the alliance of the Christian Church with the Roman State under Constantine.

10Of these treatises, the two, which, up to about sixty years ago, formed our main sources of information with regard to the Gnostics of the sub-Apostolic age^[35], are the writings of St Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons about the year 177 A.D., and of Epiphanius, Bishop of Constantia in Cyprus, who tells us he wrote in the seventh year of Gratian or 374 A.D. The first of these is considerably later in date than the heresiarchs in refutation of whose doctrines he wrote his five books “against Heresies”; and although he is most probably honest in his account of their tenets, it is evident that Irenaeus was incapable of distinguishing between the opinions of the founders of the sects which he controverts and those of their followers and successors. Epiphanius, on the other hand, wrote when the Catholic Church was already triumphant, and his principal object seems to have been to blacken the memory of those competitors whom she had already outdistanced in the race for popularity and power. Hence he spares no pains to rake together every story which theological hatred and unclean imagination had ever invented against her opponents and rivals; while his contempt for consistency and the rules of evidence show the intellectual depths to which the war which orthodox Christianity had from the first waged against Hellenistic culture had reduced the learning of the age. The language in which he and the other Catholic writers on heresy describe the Gnostics is, indeed, the first and most salient instance of that intolerance for any other opinions than their own, which a recent writer of great authority declares the Apostles and their successors derived from their Jewish nationality^[36]. “The first-born of Satan,” “seducers of women,” “savage beasts,” “scorpions,” “ravening wolves,” “demoniacs,” “sorcerers,” and “atheists” were the mildest terms in 11which Epiphanius and his fellow heresiologists can bring themselves to speak of the sectaries. They afford ample justification for the remark of the philosophic Emperor Julian that “no wild beasts are so hostile to men as Christian sects in general are to one another^[37].”

From this lack of trustworthy evidence, the discovery in 1842 at a convent on Mt Athos of eight out of the ten books of the Philosophumena now generally attributed to Hippolytus, Bishop of “Portus Romana” in 230 A.D.^[38], seemed likely to deliver us. The work thus recovered bore the title of the Refutation of all Heresies, and did succeed in giving us a fairly clear and coherent account of some twenty Gnostic sects, the very existence of many of which was previously unknown to us. Moreover, it went a good way beyond its predecessors in pointing out that the real origin of all the heretical sects then existing was to be found, not so much in the diabolic inspiration which other writers thought sufficient to account for it, as in the Pythagorean, Platonic, and other philosophies then in vogue, together with the practice of astrology and magic rites which had come to form an important part of all the Pagan religions then popular. It also showed a very extensive and apparently first-hand acquaintance with the works of the Gnostic leaders, and the lengthy quotations which it gives from their writings enable us to form a better idea than we had before been able to do both of what the Gnostic tenets really were and of the arguments by which they were propagated. Unfortunately the text of the Philosophumena has not been able to withstand the assaults of those textual critics who have already reduced the Book of Genesis to a patchwork of several authors writing at widely separate times and places, and writers like Dr. Salmon and Prof. Stähelin have laboured to show that the author of the Philosophumena was taken in by a forger who had himself concocted all the documents which Hippolytus quotes as being 12the work of different heresiarchs^[39]. Their conclusions, although they do not seem to put the matter entirely beyond doubt, have been accepted by many theological writers, especially in Germany, and in the course of the discussion the fact has emerged that the documents quoted can hardly go back to an earlier date than the year 200 A.D.^[40] It is therefore unlikely that Hippolytus had before him the actual words of the heresiarchs whom he is endeavouring to refute; and if the Philosophumena were all we had to depend upon, we might despair of knowing what “the great Gnostics of Hadrian’s time” really taught.

The reason for this paucity of documents is also plain enough. “The antidote to the scorpion’s bite,” to use a patristic figure of speech^[41], was felt by the early Church to be the actual cautery, and its leaders spared no pains to rout out and burn the writings of the heretics pending the time when they could apply the same treatment to their authors. Even before their alliance with Constantine had put the resources of the State at their disposal, they had contrived to use the secular arm for this purpose. In several persecutions, notably that of Diocletian, which was probably the most severe of them all, the Christian scriptures were particularly sought for by the Inquisitors of the State, and many of the orthodox boasted that they had arranged that the police should find the writings of the heretics in their stead^[42]. Later, when it came to the turn of the Christians to dictate imperial edicts, the possession of heretical writings was made punishable with severe penalties^[43]. 13Between orthodox Christian and Pagan it is a wonder that any have survived to us.

A lucky chance, however, has prevented us from being entirely ignorant of what the Gnostics had to say for themselves. In 1851, a MS. which had been known to be in the British Museum since 1778, was published with a translation into a curious mixture of Latin and Greek by the learned Petermann, and turned out to include a sort of Gospel coming from some early Gnostic sect^[44]. From a note made on it by a writer who seems to have been nearly contemporary with its scribes, it is known as Pistis Sophia or “Faith-Wisdom”; and the same MS. also contains fragments of other works coming from a cognate source. In 1891, a papyrus in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, which had been brought into this country in 1769 by the traveller Bruce, was also published with a French translation by M. Amélineau, an ex-Abbé who has long made the later Egyptian language his peculiar study, and proved to contain two documents connected with the system disclosed in the Pistis Sophia^[45]. Both MSS. are in Coptic of the dialect of the Sahid or Upper Egypt, to which fact they probably owe their escape from the notice of the Byzantine Inquisitors; and they purport to contain revelations as to the next world and the means of attaining salvation therein made by Jesus on His return to earth after the Resurrection. Although these several documents were evidently not all written at one time and place, and cannot be assigned to a single author, the notes and 14emendations appearing on the MSS. show that most of them must have been in the possession of members of the same school as their composers; and that therefore we have here for the first time direct and authentic evidence of the Gnostic tenets, as put forward by their adherents instead of by their opponents.

The collation of these documents with the excerpts from other Gnostic writings appearing in early writers like Clement of Alexandria who were not professed heresiologists^[46], shows that the post-Christian Gnostic sects had more opinions in common than would be gathered from the statements of St Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Epiphanius, and that they probably fulfilled a real want of the age^[47]. All of them seem to have held that there was one Supreme Being, the source of all good, and that matter was inherently malignant and opposed to him. All of them, too, seem to have taught the perfectibility of man’s nature, the salvation of at any rate the majority of mankind, and the possibility of their rising in the scale of being; and all of them held that this was to be effected mainly by means of certain mysteries or sacramental rites which were assumed to have a magical efficacy. All these fundamental characteristics find their origin in the beliefs of the pre-Christian religions and religious associations described above, and doubtless owed much to their influence. But with these, there was now combined for the first time the recognition of the divinity of One who, while appearing upon earth as a man among men, 15was yet thought by all to be endowed with a greater share of the Divine nature than they. Orpheus, Moses, Homer, and the Jewish prophets had in turn been claimed as religious teachers who were divinely inspired; but Jesus was asserted by every later Gnostic school of whose teachings we have any evidence to have been Himself of higher essence and substance than the rest of mankind^[48]. How far this assertion was dictated by the necessity for finding a superhuman authority for the revelation which each Gnostic leader professed to make to his disciples may be open to question; but in view of some contemporary controversies it is well to draw attention to the fact that the Divinity in some shape or other of Jesus, as well as what is now called His “historicity,” was never for a moment called in question during the first three centuries by Gnostic or Catholic. Μονογενής or Monogenes^[49]—a word which Catholic writers later confused with Μονογεννητός or “only-begotten,” but which is best represented by the corresponding Latin expression unicus or “unique” (i.e. one of a kind)—is the word in which the Gnostics summed up their conceptions of the nature of Jesus^[50].

This belief, however, led to consequences which do not at first sight seem to follow from it. The gods of classical antiquity were indeed supposed to be of like passions with ourselves, and the Greek of Homer’s time never thought it shame to attribute to them jealousy or lust or fear or vanity or any other of the weaknesses which afflict us^[51]. But the one feature besides their beauty that distinguished the Greek gods from humanity was 16their immortality or freedom from death; and if demigods like Heracles were said to have gone through the common experience of mortals, this was held as proof that their apotheosis or deification did not take place until they had left the earth^[52]. So much was this the case that the Greeks are said to have been much amused when they first beheld the Egyptians wailing for the death of Osiris, declaring that if he were a god he could not be dead, while if he were not, his death was not to be lamented^[53]; and Plutarch, when repeating the story to his countrymen, thought it necessary to explain that in his view the protagonists in the Osiris and Set legend were neither gods nor men, but “great powers” or daemons not yet deified and in the meantime occupying a place between the two^[54]. The same difficulty was, perhaps, less felt by the other Mediterranean peoples, among whom, as we have seen, the idea of a god who died and rose again was familiar enough^[55]; but the Gnostic leaders must always have had before their eyes the necessity of making Christianity acceptable to persons in possession of that Hellenistic culture which then dominated the world, and which still forms the root of all modern civilization. How, then, were they to account for the fact that their God Jesus, whether they considered Him as the Logos or Word of Philo, or the Monogenes or Unique Power of the Supreme Being, had suffered a shameful death by sentence of the Roman procurator in Judaea?

The many different answers that they gave to this question showed more eloquently than anything else the difficulties with which it was surrounded. Simon, according to Hippolytus, said that Jesus only appeared on earth as a man, but was not really one, and seemed to have suffered in Judaea, although he had not really done so^[56]. Basilides the Egyptian, the leader 17of another sect, held, according to Irenaeus, that the body of Jesus was a phantasm and had no real existence, Simon of Cyrene having been crucified in his stead^[57]; while Hippolytus, who seems to have drawn his account of Basilides’ teaching from a different source from that used by his predecessor, makes him say that only the body of Jesus suffered and relapsed into “formlessness^[58],” but that His soul returned into the different worlds whence it was drawn. Saturninus, another heresiarch, held, according to both authors, to the phantasmal theory of Jesus’ body, which attained such popularity among other Gnostic sects that “Docetism,” as the opinion was called, came to be looked upon by later writers as one of the marks of heresy^[59], and Hippolytus imagines that there were in existence sects who attached such importance to this point that they called themselves simply Docetics^[60]. Valentinus, from whose teaching, as we shall see, the principal system of the Pistis Sophia was probably derived, also adhered to this Docetic theory, and said that the body of Jesus was not made of human flesh, but was constructed “with unspeakable art” so as to resemble it, the dove-like form which had descended into it at His baptism leaving it before the Crucifixion^[61]. According to Irenaeus, too, Valentinus held that the Passion of Jesus was not intended as an atonement or sacrifice for sin, as the Catholics taught, but merely as a symbol or reflection of something that was taking place in the bosom of the Godhead^[62].

Another point in which the chief post-Christian Gnostic sects seem to have resembled one another is the secrecy with which their teachings were surrounded. Following strictly the practice of the various mysteries—the Eleusinian, the Isiac, Cabiric, and others—in which the Mediterranean god, whether called Dionysos, Osiris, Attis, Adonis, or by any other name, was worshipped, none were admitted to a knowledge of their doctrines without 18undergoing a long, arduous, and expensive course of initiation. More than one Gnostic teacher is said to have told his hearers to conceal from men what they were, or in other words not to let it be known that they were affiliated to the sect^[63], and all the Fathers bear witness to the way in which in time of persecution the Gnostics escaped by professing any faith that would satisfy the Roman authorities. By doing so, they laid themselves open to the accusation hurled at them with great virulence by the Church, that their secret rites and doctrines were so filthy as to shock human nature if made public—an accusation which at the first appearance of Christianity had been brought against the Catholics, and which the Church has ever since made use of against any sect which has differed from her, repeating it even at the present day against the Jews and the Freemasons^[64]. There is, however, no reason why the accusation should be better founded in one case than in the others; and it is plain in any event that the practice of secrecy when expedient followed directly from the magical ideas which have been shown above to be the foundation of the dogmas of all the pre-Christian Gnostics, besides permeating religions like that of the Alexandrian divinities. The willingness of the post-Christian Gnostics to subscribe to any public profession of faith that might be convenient was no doubt due to the same cause^[65]. As has been well said, to the true Gnostic, Paganism, Christianity, and Mahommedanism are merely veils^[66]. The secret words and formulas delivered, and the secret rites which the initiate alone knows, are all that is necessary to assure him a distinguished place in the next world; and, armed with these, 19he can contemplate with perfect indifference all outward forms of worship.

These and other points which the post-Christian Gnostic sects seem to have had in common^[67] can therefore be accounted for by their common origin, without accepting the theory of the textual critics that the Fathers had been deceived by an impostor who had made one document do duty several times over. Yet until we have the writings of the heresiarchs actually in our hands, we must always be in doubt as to how far their opinions have been correctly recorded for us. The post-Christian Gnostic sects have been compared with great aptness to the Protestant bodies which have sprung up outside the Catholic Church since the German Reformation^[68], and the analogy in most respects seems to be perfect. Yet it would probably be extremely difficult for a bishop of the Church of Rome or of that of England to give within the compass of an heresiology like those quoted above an account of the tenets of the different sects in England and America, without making grave and serious mistakes in points of detail. The difficulty would arise from want of first-hand knowledge, in spite of the invention of printing having made the dissemination of information on such subjects a thousand times more general than in sub-Apostolic times, and of the fact that the modern sects, unlike their predecessors, do not seek to keep their doctrines secret. But the analogy shows us another cause of error. The “Free Churches,” as they are called in modern parlance, have from the outset shown themselves above all things fissiparous, and it is enough to mention the names of Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Socinus, Wesley, and Chalmers to show how hopelessly at variance the teachings of the founders of sects at first sight are. But in spite of this, there seems to have been always a sort of fluidity of doctrine among them, and hardly any of 20the Nonconformist sects now profess the dogmas with which they first came into existence. The changes in this respect, however, never involve the borrowing of new tenets from sources external to them all, but seem to be brought about by a sort of interfiltration between one sect and another. Thus, for example, for many centuries after the Reformation the majority of the dissident sects which rejected all connection with the Catholic Church were among the stoutest defenders of the Divinity of Jesus, and the Socinians who held the contrary opinion were in an entirely negligible minority. At the present day, however, the tendency seems to run the other way, and many Nonconformist bodies are leaning towards Unitarian doctrines, although few of them probably have ever heard the name of Socinus. A similar tendency to interpenetration of doctrines early showed itself among the Gnostics; and there can be little doubt that it sometimes led to a fusion or amalgamation between sects of widely differing origin. Hence it is not extraordinary that certain tenets are sometimes recorded by the Fathers as peculiar to one Gnostic leader and sometimes to another, and to trace accurately their descent, it would be necessary to know the exact point in the history of each sect at which such tenets appeared. But the Fathers seldom thought of distinguishing between the opinions of an heresiarch and those of his successors, and the literary habits of the time were not in favour of accurate quotation of documents or even of names^[69]. This forms the chief difficulty in dealing with the history of the Gnostic teaching, and although the discovery of fresh documents contemporary with those we now possess would undoubtedly throw additional light upon the subject, it is probable that it will never be entirely overcome.

21Generally speaking, however, Gnosticism played a most important part in the history of Christianity. Renan’s view that it was a disease which, like croup, went near to strangling the infant Church is often quoted^[70]; but in the long run it is probable that Gnosticism was on the whole favourable to her development. In religion, sentiment often plays a larger part than reason; and any faith which would enable men of weight and influence to continue the religious practices in which they had been brought up, with at the outset but slight modification, was sure of wide acceptance. There seems no doubt that the earlier Gnostics continued to attend the mysteries of the Chthonian deities in Greece and of their Oriental analogues, Osiris, Attis, Adonis, and the like elsewhere, while professing to place upon what they there saw a Christian interpretation^[71]. Here they acted like the little leaven that leaveneth the whole lump, and this did much to spread the knowledge of the new faith among those spiritually-minded Gentiles, who would never have felt any interest in Christianity so long as it remained merely a branch of Judaism^[72]. Most of them, moreover, sooner or later abandoned their Gnosticism, and became practising members of the Catholic Church, who sometimes went a long way to meet them. As Renan has said, none of them ever relapsed into Paganism^[73], and in this way the so-called heresies became at once the feeders of orthodox Christianity and its richest recruiting-ground^[74]. They offered in fact an easy road by which the wealthy, the learned, and the highly-placed could pass from Paganism to Christianity without suffering the inconvenience imposed upon the first followers of the Apostles.

22On the other hand, it may be argued that the Church in receiving such recruits lost much of that simplicity of doctrine and practice to which it had hitherto owed her rapid and unvarying success. The Gnostics brought with them into their new faith the use of pictures and statues, of incense, and of all the paraphernalia of the worship of the heathen gods. Baptism which, among the Jewish community in which Christianity was born, was an extremely simple rite, to be performed by anybody and entirely symbolical in its character^[75], became an elaborate ceremony which borrowed the name as well as many of the adjuncts of initiation into the Mysteries. So, too, the Agape (love-feast) or common meal, which in pre-Christian times was, as we have seen, common to all Greek religious associations unconnected with the State, was transformed by the Gnostics into a rite surrounded by the same provisions for secrecy and symbolizing the same kind of sacrifice as those which formed the central point of the mystic drama at Eleusis and elsewhere. Both these sacraments, as they now came to be called, were thought to be invested with a magical efficacy, and to demand for their proper celebration a priesthood as exclusive as, and a great deal more ambitious than, that of Eleusis or Alexandria. The daring speculations of the Gnostics as to the nature of the godhead and the origin of the world also forced upon the Catholics the necessity of formulating her views on these points and making adhesion to them a test of membership^[76]. To do so was possibly to choose the smaller of two evils, yet it can hardly be denied that the result of the differences of opinion thus aroused was to deluge the world 23with blood and to stay the progress of human knowledge for more than a thousand years^[77]. It is said that if Gnosticism had not been forcibly suppressed, as it was directly the Christian priesthood obtained a share in the government of the State, Christianity would have been nothing but a battle-ground for warring sects, and must have perished from its own internal dissensions. It may be so; but it is at least as possible that, if left unmolested, many of the wilder sects would soon have withered away from their own absurdity, and that none of the others would have been able to endure for long. In this respect also, the history of the post-Reformation sects offers an interesting parallel.

Be that as it may, it is plain that the Catholic Church, in devoting her energies to the suppression of the Gnostic heresies, lost much of the missionary power which till then had seemed all-conquering. During the two centuries which elapsed between the siege of Jerusalem under Vespasian and the accession of Aurelian, the Church had raised herself from the position of a tiny Jewish sect to that of the foremost among the many religions of the Roman Empire. A brief but bloody persecution under Diocletian convinced the still Pagan Emperors of the impossibility of suppressing Christianity by force, and the alliance which they were thus driven to conclude with it enabled the Church to use successfully against the Gnostics the arm which had proved powerless against the Catholics^[78]. Yet the 24triumph was a costly one, and was in its turn followed by a schism which rent the Church in twain more effectually than the Gnostic speculations could ever have done. In the West, indeed, the Latin Church was able to convert the barbarians who extinguished the Western half of the Roman Empire; but in the East, Christianity had to give way to a younger and more ardent faith. How far this was due to the means taken by the Church to suppress Gnosticism must still be a matter of speculation, but it is certain that after her first triumph over heresy she gained no more great victories.

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