Note 679 — Chapter X · THE SYSTEM OF THE PISTIS SOPHIA AND ITS RELATED TEXTS[459]

To thinkers like Dean Inge (Christian Mysticism, 1899, p. 82) this was the natural and appointed end of Gnosticism, which according to him was “rotten before it was ripe.” “It presents,” he says, “all the features which we shall find to be characteristic of degenerate mysticism. Not to speak of its oscillations between fanatical austerities and scandalous licence, and its belief in magic and other absurdities, we seem, when we read Irenaeus’ description of a Valentinian heretic, to hear the voice of Luther venting his contempt upon some Geisterer of the sixteenth century.” It may be so; yet, after all, Gnosticism in its later developments lasted for a longer time than the doctrines of Luther have done, particularly in the land of their birth.