Note 301 — Chapter IV
Neil Buchanan translation
Footnote 301:
(return)
It is a good tradition, which designates the so-called Gnosticism, simply as Gnosis, and yet uses this word also for the speculations of non-Gnostic teachers of antiquity (e.g., of Barnabas). But the inferences which follow have not been drawn. Origen says truly (c. Celsus III. 12) "As men, not only the labouring and serving classes, but also many from the cultured classes of Greece, came to see something honourable in Christianity, sects could not fail to arise, not simply from the desire for controversy and contradiction, but because several scholars endeavoured to penetrate deeper into the truth of Christianity. In this way sects arose, which received their names from men who indeed admired Christianity in its essence, but from many different causes had arrived at different conceptions of it."