Fragments of a Faith Forgotten

I. The Highest Lightworld, or The Kingdom of Light, i. The First Space of the Ineffable. ii. The Second Space of the Ineffable, or the First Space of the First Mystery. ii. The Second Space of the First Mystery. II. The Higher (or Middle) Light-world, i. The Treasure of Light, ii. The Place of the Right, iii. The Place of the Midst. III. The Lower Lightor ^Eon-world (The Mixture of Light and Matter), i. The Place of the Left. 6. The Lower Firmament, ii. The World of Men. iii. The Underworld. We now come to a brief consideration of the superior MS. of the Bruce Codex. Here also we must rule out of place any attempt to grapple with an exposition of the system presupposed by the compiler or compilers, in spite of the following opinion and high appreciation of Schmidt, who in his Introduction (pp. 34 and 35) writes :

" What a different world on the contrary meets us in our thirty-one leaves ! We find ourselves in the pure spheres of the highest Pleroma, see step by step this world, so rich in heavenly bein£8> coming into existence before our eyes; each individual space with all its inmates is minutely described, so that we can form for our selves a living picture of the glory and splendour of this Gnostic heaven. The speculations are not so confused and fantastic as those of the Pistil* Sophia and our two Books of Jeu ; here every thing is in full harmony and logical sequence. The author is imbued with the Greek spirit, equipped with a full knowledge of Greek philosophy, full of the doctrine of the Platonic ideas, an adherent of Plato's view of the origin of evil — that is to say Hyle (Matter). Here it is not Christ who is the organ of all communications to the disciples; it is not Jesus who is God's envoy, and the redeemer and bringer of the mysteries; but we possess in these leaves a magnificently conceived work by an old Gnostic philosopher, and we stand astonished, marvelling at the boldness of the speculations, dazzled by the richness of the thought, touched by the depth of soul of the author. This is not, like the Pistis Sophia, the product of declining Gnosticism, but dates from a period when Gnostic genius like a mighty eagle left the world behind it, and soared in wide and ever wider circles towards pure light, towards pure knowledge, in which it lost itself in ecstasy.

" In one word, we possess in this Gnostic work as regards age and contents a work of the very highest importance, which takes us into a period of Gnosticism, and therefore of Christianity, of which very little knowledge has been handed down to us." While cordially agreeing with Schmidt in his last paragraph, and in his high appreciation of the Not to be sublimity of the contents of this MS., we must to a Single venture to differ from him as to the clearness and logical order of the contents as at present preserved to us. If all is so clear and in such logical sequence, it is surprising that Schmidt has made no attempt to explain the contents. Many and many an hour have I puzzled over the contents of his translation and tried to get them into order, but I have as yet always failed. The result of my study, however, has led me to differ from Schmidt's assumption that the work is by a single author.

My present conclusion, which is of course put forward as entirely tentative, is that the underlying The matter was originally in the form of an Basis, apocalypse, a series of visions of some subtle phase of the inner ordering and substance of things. I would suggest that these visions were not in an ordered sequence, but were written down, or taken down, at different times as the seer described the inner working of nature from different points of view. The original writer was clearly, as it seems to me, an adherent of the Basilidian Gnosis, imbued with its teaching and nomenclature; but he had his own illumination as well, and, seeing some of the things of which he had been taught, in high enthusiasm and inspired con fidence, he sang of the greater things by analogy oo

with the lower he had seen — even these lower being so glorious that he could not express them as they really are. These apocalyptic visions were elaborately Thepverexpanded and annotated and welded into a unity (the first part being cosmogonical, and the second soteriological) by a writer of great knowledge and wide reading, who was not only familiar with all the Gnostic literature of his time, but also had seen the things for himself; he laboured to make a consistent treatise with the apocalyptic material, 011 which he set a very high value, as a basis; but he often did not succeed, and clearly states that it is impossible for any " tongue of flesh " to tell of such sublime mysteries.

I am strongly persuaded that the overwriting of this apocalypsis belongs to the same circle of literary activity of which we have been already treating. In it I think we have another specimen of the attempts to re-edit and syntheticize the Gnosis, of which the main attempt is associated with the activity of Valentinus. As to the history of the Greek original, it parallels presumably that of the Pistis Sophia original. It was probably translated about the same time, and had adventures of a somewhat similar nature.

WE have now to lay before our readers what little information is at present available with regard to the latest find in Gnosticism. Ten years ago, Dr. Carl Schmidt informed me that he had hopes of bringing out a work on the subject (including pre sumably a text and translation) in some two years ; but unfortunately his anxiously-awaited labours have not yet seen the light. We are, therefore, entirely dependent upon the report of the important communi cation made by him to the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences (Kgl. preuss. Acad. d. Wissenschaften) published in the Transactions, and dated July 16th, 1896. Schmidt's communication, entitled A " Pre-irenseic Gnostic Original Work in Coptic " (" Ein vorirenaeisches gnostisches Original - werk in koptischer Sprache "), proves the enormous importance of the happy discovery. His paper is of course exceedingly technical and learned, but the following summary will give the reader a general idea of a subject which at present can only appeal to a very limited number of specialists, but which ought in time to be familiar to all serious students of Christian theosophy.

In January, 1896, Dr. Rheinhardt procured at Cairo, from a dealer of antiquities from Akhmim, The MS. this precious papyrus MS., which he asserted had Contents. been discovered by a fellah in a niche in a wall. The MS. is now in the Berlin Egyptian Museum, each leaf being carefully protected with glass. Unfortunately the MS. is not entirely perfect; it contained originally seventy-one leaves — six of which are now missing ; each page contains about eighteen to twenty-two lines. The writing is of extraordinary beauty, and points to the fifth century. After a short preface, the MS. bears the super scription Gospel according to Mary, and on p. 77 the subscription Apocryphon of John ; immediately on the same page follows the title Wisdom of Jesus Christ, and on p. 128 the same subscription ; the next page begins without a title, but at the end of the MS. we find the subscription Acts of Peter.

The MS. therefore contains three distinct treatises, The Gospel of Mary and The Apocryphon of John being the same piece. The first work begins with the words : " Now it The Gospel came to pass on one of these days, when John the brother of James — the sons of Zebedee — had gone up to the temple, that a Pharisee, named Ananias (?), came unto him and said unto him : ' Where is thy Master, that thou dost not follow him ? ' He said unto him : ' From whence He came thither is He gone (?).' The Pharisee said unto him : ' With deceit hath the Nazarsean deceived you, for he hath . . . you and made away with the tradition of your fathers.5 When I heard this I went away from the temple to the mountain unto a solitary place, and was exceedingly sorrowful in heart and said : ' How now was the Saviour chosen ; and wherefore was He sent to the world by His Father who sent Him ; and who is His Father ; and what is the formation of that seon to which we shall go ? "

While he is sunk in these thoughts, the heavens open, and the Lord appears to him and to the dis ciples, in order to resolve his doubts. The Saviour then leaves them, and again they are sorrowful and weep. They said : " How can we go to the heathen and preach the gospel of the kingdom of the Son of Man ? If they have not received Him, how will they receive us ? " Then Mary arose, and, having embraced them all, spake unto her brethren : " Weep not, and be not sorrowful, nor doubt, for His grace will be with you all and will overshadow you. Let us rather praise His good ness that he hath prepared us, and made us to be men."

Peter requests her to proclaim what the Lord had revealed to her, thus acknowledging the great distinction which the Lord had always permitted her above all women. Thereupon she begins the narrative of an appearance of the Lord in a dream ; unfortunately some pages are here missing. Hardly has she finished, when Andrew rises, and says that he cannot believe that the Lord has given such novel teachings. Peter also rejects her testimony and chides her. And Mary in tears says unto him : " Peter, of what dost thou think ? Belie vest thou that I have imagined this only in myself, or lied as to the Lord ? " And now Levi comes forward to help Mary, and chides Peter as an eternal quarreller. How the dispute went on we cannot determine, as two pages are missing. On p. 21 a new episode begins and continues to the end of the first treatise without a break.

The Lord appears again to John, and John immediately repairs to his fellow-disciples and relates what the Saviour had revealed unto him. Schmidt suggests that the original title was The Apocalypse or Revelation, and not The Apocryphon of John. The book of the Wisdom of Jesus Christ begins The Wisdom with the words : "After His resurrection from the Christ. dead His twelve disciples and seven women disciples had gone into Galilee to the mount which .... for they were in doubt as to the hypostasis of the All .... as to the mysteries and holy economy. Then did the Saviour appear unto them not in His prior form but in the invisible spirit. His form was that of a great angel of light, His substance indescribable, and He was not clothed in flesh that dieth, but in pure, perfect flesh, as He taught us on the mountain in Galilee which was called . . . He said : ' Peace be unto you ; My peace I give unto you.' " And they were all astonished and were afraid.

And the Lord bids them lay all their questions before Him; and the several disciples bring forward their doubts and receive the desired replies. The Acts of Peter are likewise of Gnostic origin, and belong to the great group of apocryphal stories of the Apostles. This third document treats of an episode from the healingwonders of Peter. The importance of the whole MS. is, not only that irenams it hands down to us three hitherto unknown Gnostic the Gospel writings, but especially that it gives us a work which was known to Irenseus, our first important " authority " on Gnosticism among the Fathers — Irenasus begins the last section of his first Book (29-31) with the words: "And besides these, from among those whom we have before mentioned as followers of Simon, a multitude of Barbelo-Gnostics hath arisen, and they have shown themselves as mushrooms from the ground."

In cap. 29 he treats mostly of a group of so-called Barbelo-Gnostics, with regard to whom he gives the contents of one of the books they used, a teaching which we do not find put forward by either the earlier or later haeresiarchs. Theodoret (I. 13) among the rest of the Refutators alone knows of this teaching, and he simply copies Irenseus. This source is our Gospel of Mary ; and we can now for the first time control Irenaeus point by point, and see how little the Church Father succeeded or could succeed in reproducing the exceedingly complicated systems of the Gnostic schools. A few examples will be sufficient to establish this point abundantly. Irenaeus begins his exposition with these words: " Some of them suppose a certain never-asfeiiiir An

^Lon in a Virginal Spirit, whom they name Statement*. Barbelo. Where they say is a certain unnameable Father." This " Father of All " is characterized in our new document (p. 22) as the Invisible ; as Pure The Father. Light, in which no one can see with mortal eyes; as Spirit, for no one can imagine how He is formed ; the Everlasting, the Unspeakable ; the Unnameable, for no one existed before Him to give Him a name. Of Him it is said : " He thinketh His Image alone and beholdeth it in the Water of Pure Light which surroundeth Him. And His Thought energized and revealed herself, and stood before Him in the Light-spark ; which is the Power which existed before the All, which Power hath revealed itself ; which is the perfect Forethought of the All; the Light, the Likeness of the Light, the Image of the The Mother. Invisible; that is, the perfect Power, the Barbelo, the ^Eon perfect in glory— glorifying Him, because she hath manifested herself in Him and thinketh Him. She is the first Thought, his Image; she becometh the First Man ; that is, the Virginal Spirit, she of the triple Manhood, the triple-powered one, the triple-named, triple-born; the ^Eon which ages not, the Man-woman, who hath come forth from His Forethought."

According to this, the " Father of the All " stands at the head of the system, the " Invisible." After Him comes His " Image," that is, the "jBarbelo," the " perfect Power," the " unageing ^Eon " of Irenaeus. By thinking of His Image, His Thought reveals herself in the Light-spark, that is, in Barbelo. Irenseus gives all this in a short, incomprehensible abstract as follows: "And that He was fain to manifest Himself to the same Barbelo. And that Thought came forth and stood before Him, and asked for Foreknowledge." Our text then proceeds: "And Barbelo besought The Pentad. Him to give unto her Foreknowledge. He nodded, and when He had thus nodded assent, Foreknow ledge manifested herself and stood with Thought, that is Forethought, and glorified the Invisible and the perfect Power, the Barbelo, for that through her she had come into existence.

"Again this Power besought that Incorruptibility be given unto her. He nodded, and when He had thus nodded assent, Incorruptibility manifested her self and stood with Thought and Foreknowledge, glorifying the Invisible and Barbelo, in that through her she had come into existence. " For their sakes she besought that EverlastingLife be given them. He nodded, and when He had thus nodded assent, Everlasting Life manifested herself, and they stood and glorified Him and Barbelo, because through her they had come into existence in the manifestation of the Invisible Spirit. " This is the pentad of the ^Eons of the Father, that is, the First Man, the Image of the Invisible; that is, Barbelo, and Thought, and Foreknowledge, and Incorruptibility and Life Everlasting."

At the request of Barbelo, also, the Invisible causes to come forth after Thought the three following feminine ^Eons, according to Irenseus ; " Thought asked for Foreknowledge ; Foreknowledge also having come forth, again upon their petition came forth Incorruptibility ; then afterwards Life Eternal ; in whom Barbelo rejoicing, and looking forth into the greatness, and delighted with her conception, generated into it a Light like unto it; her they affirm to be the beginning of the enlightening and generation of all things; and that the Father seeing this Light anointed it with His goodness to make it perfect ; and this they say is the Christ." In this passage without doubt Irenaeus had before his eyes the words : " He is the decad of the Mous, that is, He is the Father of the ingenerable Father. Barbelo gazed into Him fixedly . . . and she gave birth to a blessed Light-spark. Nor doth it differ from her in greatness. This is the Alone-begotten, who hath manifested himself in the Father, the self -generated God, the first-born Son of the All, the pure Light-spirit. Now the Invisible Spirit rejoiced over the Light, which had come into existence, which had first of all manifested itself in the first Power — that is, His Forethought — in Barbelo. And He anointed him with His goodness, that he might be made perfect."

This Alone-begotten is consequently identical witli the Light or the Christ. Irenseus offers us here no enlightenment, and further on he only gives us the sentence : " Therefore the First Angel, who stands near the Alone-begotten," etc. The Alone-begotten asks for Mind to be given him ; when this has been done, he praises, as Mind, the Father and Barbelo. Irenseus continues : " And this, they say, is Christ ; who again requests, as they say, that Mind may be given to help him ; and then came forth Mind ; and after these the Father sends forth the Word." In this place Irenaeus has omitted a stage and quite forgotten the third male ^Eon, namely, Will. Our MS. gives us the following :

" The Invisible Spirit willed to energize. His Will energized and revealed itself and stood with the Mind and the Light praising Him. The Word followed the Will, for through the Word hath Christ created all things." With this the upper Ogdoad is shut off from the Decad, the lower aeon proceeding from separate pairs. The Christ. Next we have the Self-begotten from Thought, the Word, of whom it is written : " Whom He hath honoured with great honour, because he came forth from His first Thought. The Invisible hath set him as God over the All. The True God gave him all powers, and made the Truth that is in Him subject unto him, that he might think out the All."

Irenaeus reproduces this as follows : " Then after wards, of Mind and the Word, they say, was sent forth the Self-begotten, to represent the Great Light, and that he was highly honoured, and all things made subject unto him. And the Truth was sent out also with him, and that there is a conjunction of the Self-begotten and Truth." (It is impossible at present to attempt to analyze the system from the above frag ments; it may, however, be suggested that the treatise is here exposing the three root-phases, or moments of emanation, of the Pleroina, or ideal world: (a) the In-generable, (b) the Self-generable, and (c) the Generable — the Father, the Logos, the All. The Gnosis, however, is more elaborate than any other known system, and its idealistic intuitions of primal processes know no limits.)

From the Light of the Christ and the Incorruptible proceed forth four great Lights to surround the Self -begotten. Their names are Harmozel, Oroiael, Daveithe and Eleleth. From Will and Everlasting Life proceed four others : Charis, Synesis, Aisthesis and Phronesis. Irenseus writes : " And from the Light which is Christ, and Incorruptibility, four Luminaries were sent forth to surround the Self -begotten ; and that from Will again and Life Everlasting, four such emanations were sent forth to minister under the four Luminaries, which they call Grace (Charis), Free-will (Thelesis), Understanding (Synesis), and Prudence (Phronesis). And that Charis for her part was conjoined with the great and first Luminary ; and this they will have to be the Saviour, and call him Harmogen ; and Thelesis with the second, whom also they call Raguel; and Synesis with the third, whom they name David ; and Phronesis with the fourth, whom they name Eleleth."

This passage is of interest in many ways. We learn the correct names ; we notice that three of them (Eleleth, Daveithe, Oroiael) are also to be found in the Codex Brucianus, and thus we establish the relation of this important Codex with the first piece in our MS. These proofs are sufficient to establish the point The * that The Gospel of Mary was composed before A.D. Origin 180, and that the Greek original, from which the Treatise/ Coptic translation was made, was earlier than Irenseus. In the opinion of Dr. Schmidt, the used it was the same as that designated by Irenaeus as the Barbelo-Gnostics, or, as they usually called themselves, simply the Gnostics; this School was further subdivided into many single denominations, whose names and teachings Epiphanius has given us in detail. Among them were circulated many books under the name of Mary; thus Epiphanius (Hcer., xxvi. 8) speaks of The Questions of Mary, both The Great and The Little, and even in xii. of The Genealogy of Mary. Celsus had previously also met with this School, and perhaps was acquainted with our work, for he informs us that some heretics derive their origin from Mary and Martha, and gives the well-known diagram of the so-called Ophites. Yet more ; our original work shows us that Irenaeus " copied " from our book only up to a certain place ; and in I. 30, he used a second work of the same School which had fallen into his hands.

So far Dr. Schmidt, whose interesting communica tion is followed by a note of Professor Harnack. Harnack gives his opinion as follows : " This find is of the first importance to primitive Church history ; not only because we have one The Opinion (or perhaps three) original Gnostic works ° of the second century — (is the Wisdom of Jesus Christ possibly the famous work of Valentinus ?) — but kind fate has also added to our debt that Irenaeus has quoted from one of the three treatises. We are thus for the first time in a position to control by the original the presentation of a Gnostic system as rendered by the Church Father. The result of this examination shows, as we might

have expected, that owingto omissions, and because no effort was made to understand his opponents, the sense of the by no means absurd speculations of the Gnostics has been ruined by the Church Father. Another fact — which can only with the greatest difficulty be extracted from the writings of their opponents — is that the system treats of a psycho logical process within the first principle, which the Gnostics desired to unfold. Tertullian certainly says once ( Adv. Valent., iv.) : ' Ptolemaeus, the pupil of Valentinus, split up the names and numbers of the aeons into personified " substances," external to deity, whereas Valentinus himself had included these in the very summit of the godhead as the impressions of sensation and feeling' — but which of the Church Fathers has given himself the trouble thus to under stand the speculations of Valentinus and of the other Gnostics ?

" According to Hippolytus (Philos., vi. 42), the followers of the Gnostic Marcus complained of the misrepresentation of their teaching by Irenaeus; the followers of our newly discovered book could also have complained of the incomprehensible fashion in which Irenaeus had represented their teachings. " Thus, we had previously known a Gnostic work which probably originated in Egypt in the second century, only through an epitome of it by a Gallic bishop about the year 185, and now we find it again in a Coptic translation of the fifth century — verily a paradoxical method of transmission ! " If, however, the last chapters of Book I. of Irenaeus are copied from the lost Syntagma of Justin or some other earlier work, as the best critics have previously maintained, then the original of our new document has a considerably earlier date than Schmidt or Harnack assign to it in the above Transaction.

The student of Gnosticism will at once perceive that the importance of the new find cannot be over- The estimated. The new documents throw light not Of the MS. only on the Codex Brucianus, but also on the system of the Pistis Sophia. We have now these three original sources on which to base our study of Gnostic theosophy; and there is hope that at last something may be done to rescue the views of the best Gnostic doctors from obscurity, and from the environment of pious refutation in which they have been previously smothered. The task of the sympathetic student should now be to find appropriate terms for the technicalities of the Gnosis, place the various orders of ideas in their proper relation, and show that the method of the Gnosis, which looked at the problems of cosmogony and anthropogony from above, may be as reasonable in its proper domain as are the methods of modern scientific research, which regard such problems entirely from below. We should not forget that men like Valentinus were theosophists, engaged on precisely the same studies as their brethren the world over. The greatest cosmogonies of the world are of the same nature as Gnostic cosmogenesis, and a study of these will convince us of the similarity of source. Gnostic anthropogenesis has many points of similarity with general theosophical ideas, and Gnostic psychology is in a great measure borne out by recent research. The

Gnostic technical terms are no more difficult of com prehension than those found in other theosophical writers; and there is an exact parallel between the varying use made of such terms by different writers on the Gnosis and the misrepresentation of the views of the Gnostics by the Church Fathers, and the various meanings given to like terms by other theosophical writers and the misrepresentation of such writers by their critics. The Gnostics were themselves partly to blame for their obscurity, and the Church Fathers were partly to blame for their misrepresentation. In brief, the same standard of criticism has to be applied to the writings of the Gnostics as the discriminating student has to apply to all such literature. It is true that to-day we speak openly of many things that the Gnostics wrapped up in symbol and myth ; nevertheless our real knowledge on such subjects is not so very far in advance of the great doctors of the Gnosis as we are inclined to imagine ; now, as then, there are only a few who really know what they are writing about, while the rest copy, compare, adapt, and speculate.

IN the early centuries of Christianity there were in circulation many traditions, legends, and religious romances, called Memoirs, Acts, and Gospels, which contained Sayings-of-the-Lord or Logoi. These Logoi or Logia were oracles, or oracular utterances, couched in the same language and of much the same tenour as the prophetic utterances of the members of the Schools of the Prophets, which were introduced by the solemn formula, "Thus saith the Lord," when recorded in the books of the Old Covenant of the Jewish race. In course of time certain of these traditional, legendary and mythical settings of the Logoi were declared to be alone historical, and a canon of orthodox tradition was evolved from the second half of the second century onwards. I use the term " mythical " in its best sense, that is to say, stories embodying in a designed symbolic fashion the teachings of the mysteries, concerning the nature of God, the universe and the human soul.

As only a few out of the many writings were selected, a large number of Logoi was thus rejected. Rejected The latest collection of these rejected Logoi has been made by Resch, and was published in 1889 in Gebhardt and Harnack's series of Texte und Untersuchungen, under the title of Agrapha : A ussercanonische Evangelienfragmente. Some of these extra-canonical fragments are variants of the familiar canonical Sayings, and are of interest mainly for the reconstruction of one of the root-sources from which the synoptic compilers drew their information. A few have been preserved in the Pauline Letters. Others are entirely unfamiliar to those who are only acquainted with the canonical selection of the books of the New Covenant, generally called the New Testament. These Logoi are of special interest to students of the origins, and I therefore append a selection of them translated from Resch's text.

It may be mentioned that some of these Logoi have been worked into a religious novel by a Jewish writer, under the title As Others Saw Him, published in 1895, at London, by William Heinemann. Be merciful that ye may obtain mercy ; forgive that it may be forgiven unto you ; as ye do so shall it be done to you ; as ye give so shall it be given unto you ; as ye judge so shall ye be judged ; as ye do service so shall service be done to you; with what measure ye mete, with the same shall it be measured to you in return. He who is near Me is near the fire ; and he who is far from Me is far from the kingdom.

If ye observe not the little [sci., mystery], who will give you the great ? They who would see Me and reach My kingdom need must attain Me with pain and suffering. Good must needs come, but blessed is he by whom it cometh ; in like manner also evil must needs come, but woe unto him by whom it cometh. The weak shall be saved by the strong. Guard the mysteries for Me and for the sons of My house. Cleave to the holy ones, for they who cleave to them are made holy. [Fashion — that is, configuration (a-xwa), for there are other worlds and other phases of this world]. As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup make proclamation of My death and confession in My resurrection and ascension until I come [to you].

[A variant gives the saying in the third person, and speaks of the " death of the Son of the Man," the Logos. The Master promises to return to His disciples at the time of the performance of a certain holy rite.] Be ye mindful of faith and hope, through whom is born that love to God and man which giveth life There is a mingling that leadeth to death, and there is a mingling that leadeth to life. Beholding a certain man working on the Sabbath, He said unto him : Man, if thou knowest what thou doest thou art blessed ; but if thou knowest not, thou art accursed and a transgressor of the law. Why do ye wonder at the signs ? I give unto you a mighty inheritance which the whole world doth not contain.

When the Lord was asked by a certain man, When should His kingdom come, He saith unto him : When two shall be one, and the without as the within, and the male with the female, neither male nor female. Call not any one " Father " on earth, for on earth there are rulers [only] ; in heaven is the Father from whom is every descent [that is, " blood descent from a father " (-Trarpia)] both in heaven and on earth. Grieve not the Holy Spirit which is in you, and put not out the Light which hath shone forth in you. As ye see yourselves in water or mirror, so see ye Me in yourselves. As I find you, so will I judge you.

Seek for the great [mysteries] and the little shall be added to you; seek for the heavenly and the earthly shall be added to you. Be ye approved money-changers, rejecting the bad and retaining the good. Because of the sick I was sick ; because of the hungry I was ahungered ; because of the thirsty I was athirst. Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing, or fist for fist, or curse for curse. There are false christs and false teachers who have blasphemed the Spirit of Grace, and have spit forth its gift of grace; these shall not be forgiven either in this aeon or in the aeon to come. [Grace is the " power above," the power of the Logos which makes a man a " christ." Charis or Grace is the consort of the Logos, His power or shakti. The false " christs " are those who have been " initiated " and broken their vows. The aeon is a certain time-period.]

For the Heavenly Father willeth the repentance of the sinner rather than his chastisement. For God willeth that all should receive of His gifts. Keep that which fchou hast, and it shall be increased into more. Behold, I make the last as the first. I am come to end the sacrifices, and if ye cease not from sacrificing, the wrath shall not cease from you. [Woe unto him] who hath made sad the spirit of his brother. And never rejoice unless ye see your brother [also] happy. He who hath wondered shall reign, and he who hath reigned shall rest. [This is a dark saying; it has been compared to the phrase of Plato : " There is no other beginning of philosophy than wondering" — that is to say, regarding the works of the Deity with wonder and reverence. This is the beginning of philosophy, or gnosis, and the end of it makes the man king of himself, and thus master of gods and men ; thus is he at peace.]

My mother, the Holy Spirit, even now took me by one of the hairs of my head and carried me to the great mountain Tabor. [The hairs of the head may perhaps symbolise the nadi's, as they are called in the Upanishads, by which the soul goes forth from the body; the mountain is the way up to the spiritual regions.] He who seeketh me shall find me in children from seven years [onwards]; for hidden in them I am manifested in the fourteenth period (aeon). [This may refer either to the higher ego or lightspark from the Logos, or to certain degrees of initiation, the initiated having to become as " little children."] When Salome asked how long should death hold sway, the Lord said unto her : So long as ye women bring forth ; for I came to end the works of the female. And Salome said unto Him : I have then done well in not bringing forth. And the Lord answered and said : Eat of every pasture, but of that which hath the bitterness [of death] eat not. And when Salome asked when should those things of which she enquired be known, the Lord said : When ye shall tread upon the vesture of shame, and when the two shall be one, and the male with the female neither male nor female.

["Shame" is presumably the same as the "mingling" in one of the Logoi quoted above. To tread on the vesture of shame is to rise above the animal nature.] Pray for your enemies ; blessed are they who mourn over the destruction of the unbelievers. I stood on a lofty mountain, and saw a gigantic man and another, a dwarf ; and I heard as it were a voice of thunder, and drew nigh for to hear ; and He spake unto me and said, I am thou and thou art I ; and wheresoever thou mayst be I am there. In all am I scattered, and whencesoever thou wiliest, thou gatherest Me; and gathering Me thou gatherest Thyself. [Here again we have the mountain of initiation.

The initiate beholds the vision of the Heavenly Man, -the Logos, and of himself, the dwarf; of the Great Man and the little man, the light-spark which sits in the heart.] May thy Holy Spirit come upon us and purify us ! [From a very ancient version of the Lord's Prayer, instead of the clause " Thy kingdom come."] Though ye be gathered together with me in My bosom, if ye do not My commandments, I will cast you forth. Gain for yourselves, ye sons of Adam, by means of these transitory things which are not yours, that which is your own, and passeth not away. For even among the prophets after they have been anointed by the Holy Spirit, the word of sin has been found among them.

[That is to say, after they have been made " christs " (/xeTa TO ^pKrOrjvai avTOug ev TrvevjULCiTt ay/co). The " word of sin " means apparently erroneous prophetical utterances.] If a man shall abandon all for my name's sake, at the second coming he shall inherit eternal life. [" For my name's sake " signifies the power of the Great Name which the Master used in his public preaching ; the second coming is the descent of the Christ-spirit upon the candidate at his initiation. " Eternal life " is the life of the seons or spiritual existences, whose lives are an eternity.] If ye make not the below into the above and the above into the below, the right into the left and the left into the right, the before into the behind [and the behind into the before], ye shall not enter into the kingdom of God.

[That is to say, ye shall not enter into the central point and so pass into the spiritual region.] I recognised myself, and gathered myself together from all sides ; I sowed no children for the ruler, but I tore up his roots, and gathered together [my] limbs that were scattered abroad; I know thee who thou art, for I am from the realms above. [This is the apology, or defence, of the soul of the initiate as it passes through the realms of the unseen •world, each of which is in charge of a ruler, the minister of Death. As the Logos gathers together his children (the light-sparks, the limbs of his body), and takes them home into his bosom, so does the ego collect its limbs and becomes the Osirified.]

What ye preach with words before the people, do ye in deeds before every man. Thou art the key [who openest] for every man, and shuttest for every man. [This saying is put in the mouth of the disciples ; in the direct formula it would read, "I am the key," &c.] Numerous other Logoi could be added from The Gnostic literature, especially from the contents of chus the Coptic Codices; but enough has been given to show the reader that much of the Sayingsmaterial has been rejected and forgotten. How precious some of this matter was, has been lately shown by a recent discovery. The ancient papyrus-fragment discovered on the site of Oxyrhynchus by Grenfell and Hunt, in 1897, pre serves for us the most primitive form of the Logoi

known to us. Of the six decipherable Sayings it contains, one is familiar to us, two contain new matter and important variants, and three are entirely new. If the proportion of now unknown to known sayings was as high in the rest of the MS. as in the solitary leaf which has reached us, then we have indeed lost more by the Canon than we have gained. The new-found Sayings run as follows, omitting the one already familiar to us : Jesus saith : Except ye fast to the world, ye shall in no wise find the Kingdom of God ; and except ye sabbatize the Sabbath, ye shall not see the Father. Jesus saith : I stood in the midst of the world, and in flesh was I seen of them, and I found all drunken, and none found I athirst among them. And My soul grieveth over the souls of men, because they are blind in their heart and see not. . . .

Jesus saith : Wheresoever there be two, they are not without God ; and wherever there is one alone, I say, I am with him. Raise the stone, and there thou shalt find Me ; cleave the wood, and there am I. [The first part of this saying is exceedingly imperfect; I have followed Blass's conjectures. See Taylor's Oxyrhynchus Logia, Oxford ; 1899]. Jesus saith: A prophet is not acceptable in his own country, neither doth a physician work cures upon those that know him. Jesus saith : A city built on the top of a high hill and stablished can neither fall nor be hid. Jesus saith : Thou hearest with one ear (but the other thou hast closed).

Since the publication of the first edition of this work the rubbish heaps of ancient Oxyrhynchus have yielded yet another battered scrap of papyrus con taining material from a similar collection of sayings, the decipherable portions of which run as follows in Grenfell & Hunt's edition (New Sayings of Jesus ; London, 1904) : These are the . . . words which Jesus the Living (One) spake to ... and Thomas, and He said unto (them): Every one who hearkeneth to these words shall never taste of death. Jesus saith : Let not him who seeketh . . . cease until he findeth, and when he findeth he shall wonder ; wondering he shall reign, and reigning shall rest. Jesus saith : (Ye ask ? Who are these) that draw us (to the kingdom if) the kingdom is in Heaven ? . . . the fowls of the air, and all beasts that are under the earth or upon the earth, and the fishes of the sea (these are they that draw) you ; and the Kingdom of Heaven is within you ; and whosoever shall know himself shall find it. (Strive therefore ?) to know yourselves, and ye shall be aware that ye are the sons of the . . . Father ; (and ?) ye shall know that ye are in (the City of God ?), and ye are (the City ?).

Jesus saith : Everything that is not before thy face and that which is hidden from thee shall be revealed to thee. For there is nothing hidden which shall not be made manifest, nor buried which shall not be raised.

O Light of God, adorable ! we worship Thee, that Thou rnay'st pour Thy light into our minds !

READER, if you have read so far, you may have journeyed with me or have been taken by some other way; but if you have come so far upon the road? then it seems — to me at least — as though we had journeyed together to some region of light. We have for some short hours been privileged to enjoy con verse with those who loved and love the Master. With their words still ringing in our ears, with the life of their love still tingling in our veins, how can we venture to speak ill of them ? " Come unto Me, ye weary ! " In such a light of love, how shall we find the heart to condemn, because they went out unto Him with all their being ? Reading their words and looking upon their lives, I, for my part, see the brand " Heresy," writ so large upon their horizon for many, disappearing into the dim distance, and instead behold the figure of the Master standing with hands of blessing outstretched above their heads. I do not know why this side of earliest Christianity has been allowed to be forgotten. Doubtless there was a purpose served by its withdrawal ; but to-day, at the

beginning of the twentieth century, in the greater freedom and wider tolerance we now enjoy, may not the veil again be lifted? The old forms need not return — though surely some of them have enough of beauty ! But the old power is there, waiting and watching, ready to clothe itself in new forms, forms more lovely still, if we will but turn to Him who wields the power, as He really is, and not as we limit Him by our sectarian creeds. How long must it be before we learn that there are as many ways to worship God as there are men on earth ? Yet each man still declares : My way is best; mine is the only way. Or if he does not say it, he thinks it. These things, it is true, transcend our reason; religion is the something in us greater than our reason, and being greater it gives greater satisfaction. To save ourselves we must lose our selves ; though not irrationally, if reason is transcended. If it be true that we have lived for many lives before, in ways how many must we not have worshipped God or failed to do so? How often have we con demned the way we praised before ! Intolerant in one faith, equally intolerant in another, condemning our past selves !

What, then, think ye of Christ ? Must He not be a Master of religion, wise beyond our highest ideals of wisdom ? Does He condemn His worship pers because their ways are diverse ; does He condemn those who worship His Brethren, who also have taught the Way ? As to the rest, what need of any too great precision ? Who knows with the intellect enough to decide on all these high subjects for his fellows ? Let each follow the Light as he sees it — there is enough for all ; so that at last we may see " all things turned into light — sweet, joyous light." These, then, are all my words, except to add, with an ancient Coptic scribe, " O Lord, have mercy on the soul of the sinner who wrote this ! "

As nothing which may really be called a bibliography of the subject exists, I append an attempt at a preliminary contribution towards a full Bibliography of Gnosticism. Every work (and article) of import ance is (I am almost certain) included, and I think that the list of work done on the Coptic Gnostic writings may be said to be fairly complete ; there is, however, a certain number of articles in periodicals and publi cations of learned societies (French especially) which is still to be added, though I do not think that this number is large. I might have added more references to Encyclopaedias, but the vast majority of articles in such publications is of very little value. I have divided the General Bibliography into : (i.) Early Works; (ii.) Critical Studies prior to 1851; (iii.) Works subsequent to the Publication of the Text of the Philosophumena in 1851. Division i. contains works generally of very little value ; Division ii. suffers from ignorance of the contents of Hippolytus' Philosophumena, the text of which was first published by Miller at Oxford in 1851. Its

contents may be said to have revolutionized the study of Gnosticism. I have also kept apart the Biblio graphy of the work done on the Coptic Gnostic writings, which will, I believe, in the future still further revolutionize our ideas on the Gnosis. I have made a remark or two on the most popular sources of information in English, but have refrained from all other notes as out of place in so general a work as the present.

1710. Massriet (B.). Prolegomena to his edition of Irenaeus. Paris. Critical Studies prior to 1851. 1818. Lewald (E. A.)- Commentatio ad Historiam 1819 (?) Hahn (A.). Dissertatio de Gnosi Marcioiiis. Not in British Museum. mit dem Abraxasbilde. Berlin (1). Not in British Museum. Historisch-theologische Abhandlungen der Gesellschaft zu Leipzig. Not in British Museum. 1821. Hahn (A.). Antitheses Marcionis. Konigsberg. Not in British Museum. 1829. Burton (E.). An Enquiry into the Heresies Gnosticismus. Tubingen. Also in his Gesammelten Schriften. Regensberg. 1839 — 40. Vol. L, pp. 403 ff. 1834. Windischmann (W.). Art. on Esnig, in Bayer- Literatur. Munich (1). No. for Jan. Not in British Museum. 1839. Hildebrand (]). Philosophise gnosticse Origines. Berlin. Not in British Museum. 1841. Scherer (?). De Gnosticis qui in N. T. impugnari dicuntur. Strassburg. Not in British Museum.

1843. Norton (A.). The Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels. Vol. i., Boston, 1837 ; vol. ii., 1843; 2 ed., London, 1847. The whole of vol. ii. is devoted to the Gnostics. Works Subsequent to "the Publication of the Text of the Philosophumena in 1851. -1877. On Basilides in the 7th to the 10th ed. 1864. Lipsius (R. A.). Art. on Ophite Systems. 1867. Lipsius (R.A.). Rev. on the original (not in British Museum) of the following. Literarische Centralblatt fur Deutschland. Leipzig. Nr. xxvi. 1873. Lipsius (R. A.). Rev. on Heinrici's Valentini 1875. Mansel (H. L.). The Gnostic Heresies of the first and second Centuries. London. A posthumous work edited by Lightfoot, con sisting of notes of Lectures delivered in 1868.

1877 — 1888. American ed. New York and 1877. Smith (W.) and Wace (H.). A Dictionary of Christian Biography. London. 4 vols. 1877 — 1887. Contains an article on every important teacher of the Gnosis, and short notices of many of the principal technical terms by Hort, Salmon, and Lipsius. Britannica. London. 9th ed. Very short and unworthy of the subject; the sole source from which the general reader in England gets his information. pp. 1—37 1881. Hilgenfeld (A.). Art. Revised Text of Letter of Placitis et Fatis. Paris. Not in British Museum ; referred to by Carl Schmidt, who had, however, not met with a copy. Urchristenthums. Leipzig. Summing up the results of his previous researches. 1885. Salmon (G.). Art. The Cross-references in the Philosophumena. Hermathena. Dublin. Pp. 389 ff.

1887. King (C.W.). The Gnostics and their Remains, ancient and mediaeval. London. 2 ed. 1st ed., 1864, very much smaller and containing no reference to the Pistis Sophia. Britannica. London. 9th edition. A longer article than Tulloch's on the whole of Gnosticism. 1891. Brooke (A. E.). The Fragments of Heracleon newly edited from the MSS. with an Intro duction and Notes. Cambridge. Texts and Studies. Vol. i., No. 4. PAstrologue. Paris. 1897. Bevan (A. A.). The Hymii of the Soul 1899. Burkitt (F. C.). The Hymn of Bardaisan, 1900. Mead (G. R. S.). Fragments of a Faith Forgotten. Some Short Sketches among the Gnostics, mainly of the First Two Centuries. A Con tribution to the Study of Christian Origins. London.

1905. Harnack (A.). Ed. The Letter of Ptolemy to Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis. Being a Translation of the Extant Sermons arid Fragments of the Trismegistic Literature, with Prolegomena, Commentaries and Notes. London. 3 vols.

The student will find critical notices on most of the following works in the Introduction to my translation of the Pistis Sophia. 1770. Art. in Brittische theolog. Magazin (1). See Kostlin infra. I can find no trace of this in the British Museum. 1773. Woide (C. A.). Art. in Journal des Savants. Paris. 1887. King(C. W.). The Gnostics and their Remains. Contains a translation of a number of pages of P. S. See Gen. Bibliog. 1887. Lipsius (R. A.). Art. Pistis Sophia, Smith and 1889. Harnack (A.). Crit. of above. See Gen. Bibliog. vii., pt. 2. 1891. Ryle (H. E.) and James (M. R.). Psalms of the Odes quoted in the P.S. See Introd. for full (with Extracts from the Books of the Saviour

Coptic, and now for the first time Englished

These are taken mostly from Poole's (W. F.) Index to Periodical Literature. Boston. 3rd ed., 1885, with Supplements up to 1898. The British Museum press marks are conveniently given in the tables of abbreviations, etc., of this publication. 1830. Review on the same. Ibid., vol. v., pp. 569—598. Review. London. Vol. liv., pp. 373 ff. 1833. Cheever (G. B.). Art. The Philosophy of the Gnostics. The American Biblical Repository. New York. 2 ser. vol. iii., pp. 353 ff. 1833. Cheever (G. B.). Art. The Phil, of the Gnostics. 112 ff. 1858. Schaff (P.). Art. Analysis of Gnosticism. The Vol. x., pp. 259 ff. 1865. Rev. on King's Gnostics and their Remains. The 1870. Harmon (H. M.). Art. de Groot on Gnostic Testimonies to the N. T. The Methodist Quarterly. New York. Vol. xxx., pp. 485 ff.

Review. Boston. Vol. x., pp. 543 ff. 1885. Salmon (G.). Art. The Cross-References in the 1898. Cams (P.). Art. Gnosticism in Relation to Christianity. The Monist. Chicago. Vol. viii., pp. 502 — 546. The following may serve as an introduction to the subject. Lipsius' exhaustive work will supply data for a full bibliography. Leipzig. 1871. Wright (W.). Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. 1891. Lipsius (R. A.) and Bonnet (M.). Acta Aposto lorum apocrypha. Leipzig. 2 pts., pt. i. ed. by L., 1891, pt. ii. by B., 1898. 1897. Bevan (A. A.). The Hymn of the Soul contained in the Syriac Acts of St. Thomas. Cambridge. Texts and Studies. Vol. v., No. 3. For works prior to 1828 see Matter's Histoire, 1st ed., vol. ii., pp. 52, 53, where a very fair biblio graphy is to be found. See also King's Gnostics and their Remains. For more recent researches see :

For a list of Gnostic works, fragments of some of which are still extant, but of the majority the titles only, see :

A critical Study of the only existing Record of his Life, with some Account of the War of Opinion concerning him, and an Introduction on the Religious Associations and Brother hoods of the Times and the possible Influence of Indian Thought on Greece.

i. Introductory, ii. The Religious Associations and Communities of the First Century, iii. India and Greece, iv. The Apollonius of Early Opinion, v. Texts, Translations and Literature, vi. The Biographer of Apollonius. vii. Early Life. viii. The Travels of Apollonius. ix. The Shrines of the Temples and the Retreats of Religion, x. The Gymnosophists of Upper Egypt, xi. Apollonius and the Rulers of the Empire, xii. Apollonius the Prophet and Wonder-Worker. xiii. His Mode of Life. xiv. Himself and his Circle, xv. From his Sayings and Sermons, xvi. From his Letters, xvii. The Writings of Apollonius. xviii. Bibliographical Notes.