Fragments of a Faith Forgotten

The Naassenes possessed many books, and also Their regarded as authoritative the following scriptures: The Gospel of Perfection, The Gospel of Eve, The Questions of Mary, Concerning the Offspring of Mary, The Gospel of Philip, The Gospel according to Thomas, and The Gospel according to the Egyptians. One of their MSS. had fallen into the hands of Hip polytus. It was a treatise of a mystical, psychological, devotional, and ex egetical character, rather than a cosmological exposition, and therefore the system is some what difficult to make out from Hippolytus' quotations. Indeed, the Naassene Document, when analysed into its sources, is found to be the Christian overworking of the Jewish overworking of a Pagan commentary on a Hymn of the Mysteries. The date of the Christian overwriter may be placed about the middle of the second century, and the document is especially valuable as pointing out the identity of the inner teachings of Gnostic Christianity with the tenets of the Mysteries — Phrygian, Eleusinian, Dionysian, Samothracian, Egyptian, Assyrian, etc.

The Christian writer claimed that his tradition was handed down from James to a certain Mariamne. This Miriam, or Mary, is somewhat of a puzzle to scholarship; it seems, however, probable that the treatise belonged to the same cycle of tradition as The Or eater and Lesser Questions of Mary, The Gospel of Mary, etc., in the frame of which the Pistis Sophia treatise is also set. The main features of the system are that the cosmos is symbolized as the (Heavenly) Man, malefemale, of three natures, spiritual (or intelligible), psychic and material ; that these three natures found themselves in perfection in Jesus, who was therefore truly the Son of Man. Mankind is divided into three classes, assemblies, or churches : the elect, the called, and the bound (or in other words, the spiritual or angelic, the psychic, and the choic or material), according as one or other of these natures pre dominates.

After this brief outline, Hippolytus proceeds to plunge into the mystical exegesis of the writer and Their overwriters (whom he of course regards as one Exegesis, person) and their interpretation of the Mysteries, which is mixed up here and there with specimens of the pseudo-philological word-play so dear to the heart of Plato's Cratylus, as remarked above. The system is supposed to underlie all mythologies, Pagan, Jewish and Christian. It is the old teaching of macrocosm and microcosm, and the Self hidden in the heart of all. The technical character of this exegesis and the nature of our essay compel us to give only a brief summary of the main ideas; but the subject is important enough to demand a special study in itself.

The spirit or mind of man is imprisoned in the soul, his animal nature, and the soul in the body. The nature and evolution of this soul were set forth in The Gospel according to the Egyptians, a work which is unfortunately lost. ASS rian wno> together with the Egyptians, were regarded by Mysteries, antiquity as the sacred nation par excellence) first taught that man was threefold and yet a unity. The soul is the desire-principle, and all things have souls, even stones, for they increase and decrease. The real " man " is male-female, devoid of sex ; therefore he strives to abandon the animal nature and return to the eternal essence above, where there is neither male nor female but a new creature.

Baptism was not the mere symbolical washing with physical water, but the bathing of the spirit or mind in the " living water above," the eternal world, beyond the ocean of generation and destruction ; and the anointing with oil was the introduction of the candidate into unfading bliss, thus becoming a Christ. The kingdom of heaven is to be sought for within a man ; it is the " blessed nature of all things which were, and are, and are still to be," spoken of in the Phrygian Mysteries. It is of the nature of the spirit or mind, for, as it is written in The Gospel according to Thomas : " He who seeks me shall find me in children from the age of seven years " ; and this is the representative of the Logos in man.

Among the Egyptians, Osiris is the Water of Life, the Spirit or Mind, while Isis is " seven-robed nature, The . surrounded by and robed in seven sethereal mantles," the spheres of ever-changing generation, which meta morphose the ineffable, unimaginable, incomprehensible mother-substance ; while the Mind, the Self, makes all things but remains unchanged, according to the saying: " I become what I will, and I am what I am ; where fore, say I, immovable is the mover of all. For He remains what He is, making all things, and is naught of the things which are." This also is called The Good, hence the saying : " Why callest thou Me Good ? One only is Good, My Father in the heavens."

Among the Greeks, Hermes is the Logos. He is the conductor and reconductor (the psychagogue and The Greek, psychopomp), and originator of souls. They are brought down from the Heavenly Man above into the plasm of clay, the body, and thus made slaves to the demiurge of the world, the fiery or passionate god of creation. Therefore Hermes "holds a rod in his hands, beautiful, golden, wherewith he spell-binds the eyes of men whomsoever he would, and wakes them again from sleep." Therefore the saying: " Wake thou that sleepest, and rise, and Christ shall give thee light." This is the Christ, the Son of the Man, in all who are born ; and this was set forth in the Eleusinian rites. This is also Ocean, "the genera tion of gods and the generation of men," the Great Jordan, as explained in the Myth of the Going-forth, given above.

The Samothracians also taught the same truth ; and in the temple of their Mysteries were two statues, representing the Heavenly Man, and the regenerate or spiritual man, in all things co-essential with that Man. Such a one was the Christ, but His disciples had not yet reached to perfection. Hence the saying: "If ye drink not My blood and eat not My flesh, ye shall by no means enter into the Kingdom of the Heavens ; but even if ye drink of the cup which I drink of, whither I go ye cannot come." And the Gnostic writer adds : " For He knew of what nature each of His disciples was, and that it needs must be that each of them should go to his own nature. For from the twelve ' tribes ' He chose twelve disciples, and through them He spake to every ' tribe.' Where fore (also) neither have all men hearkened to the preaching of the twelve disciples, nor if they hearken can they receive it."

The mysteries of the Thracians and Phrygians are then referred to, and the same ideas further explained from the Old Testament documents. The vision of Jacob is explained as referring to the descent of spirit into matter, down the ladder of evolution, the Stream of the Logos flowing downward, and then again upward, through the Gate of the Lord. Wherefore the saying: "I am the true gate." The Phrygians also called the spirit in man the "dead," because it was buried in the tomb and sepulchre of the body. Wherefore the saying ; " Ye are whitened sepulchres, filled within with the bones of the dead," — "for the living man is not in you." And again: "The dead shall leap forth from the tombs " ; that is to say, "from their material bodies, regenerated spiritual men, not carnal." For "this is the resurrection which takes place through the gate of the heavens, and they who pass not through it, all remain dead."

Many other interpretations of a similar nature are given, and it is shown that the Lesser Mysteries pertained to " fleshly generation," whereas the Greater dealt with the new birth. " For this is the Gate of Heaven, and this is the House of God, where the Good God dwells alone, into which no impure man shall come, no psychic, no fleshly man ; but it is kept under watch for the spiritual alone, where they must come, and, casting away their garments, all become bridegrooms made virgin by the Virginal Spirit. For such a man is the virgin with child, who conceives and brings forth a son, which is neither psychic, animal, nor fleshly, but a blessed aeon of aeons."

This is the Kingdom of the Heavens, the " grain of mustard seed, the indivisible point, which is the primeval spark in the body, and which no man knoweth save only the spiritual." The school of the Naasseni, it is said, were all initiated into the Mysteries of the Great Mother, The because they found that the whole mystery of the Great of rebirth was taught in these rites; they were also rigid ascetics. The name Naasseni was given them because they represented the " Moist Essence " of the universe — without which nothing that exists, " whether immortal or mortal, whether animate or inanimate, could hold together" — by the symbol of a serpent. This is the cosmic Akasha of the Upanishads, and the Kundalini, or serpentine force in man, which when following animal impulse is the force of generation, but when applied to spiritual things makes of a man a god. It is the Waters of Great Jordan flowing downwards (the generation of men) and upwards (the generation of gods); the Akasha-ganga or Heavenly Ganges of the Puranas, the Heavenly Nile of mystic Egypt.

" He distributes beauty and bloom to all who are, just as the [river] ' proceeding forth out of Eden and dividing itself into four streams.' " In man, they said, Eden is the brain " compressed in surrounding vestures like heavens," and Paradise the man as far as the head only. These four streams are sight, hearing, smell, and taste. The river is the " water above the firmament [of the body]." Thus, to use another set of symbolic terms, "the spiritual choose for themselves from the living waters of the Euphrates [the subtle world], which flows through the midst of Babylon [the gross world or body], what is fit, passing through the gate of truth, which is Jesus, the blessed," i.e., the "gate of the heavens," or the sun, cosmically ; and microcosmically the passing out of the body consciously through the highest centre in the head, which Hindu mystics cal

the Brahmarandhra. Thus these Gnostics claimed to be the true Christians because they were anointed with the " ineffable chrism," poured out by the serpentine " horn of plenty," another symbol for the spiritual power of enlightenment. We will conclude this brief sketch of these most interesting mystics by quoting one of their hymns. The The text is unfortunately so corrupt that parts of of a Hymn. it are hopeless, nevertheless sufficient remains to " sense " the thought. .It tells of the World-Mind, the Father, of Chaos, the Cosmic Mother, and of the third member of the primordial trinity, the WorldSoul. Thence the individual soul, the pilgrim, and its sorrows and rebirth. Finally the descent of the Saviour, the firstborn of the Great Mind, and the regeneration of all. Behind all is the Ineffable, then comes first the First-born, the Logos :

" Mind was the first, the generative law of all ; Second was Chaos diffused, [spouse] of the first-born ; Thirdly, the toiling Soul received the law; Wherefore surrounded with a watery form It weary grows, subdued by death. . . . Now holding sway, it sees the light ; Anon, cast into piteous plight, it weeps. Whiles it weeps, it rejoices ; Now wails and is judged ; And now is judged and dies. And now it cannot pass .... Into the labyrinth [of rebirth] it has wandered. [Jesus] said : Father ! A searching after evil on the earth HIPPOLYTUS says that the mysteries symbolized by the serPent are at the root of all Gnosticism; and Tradition though the Church Father himself has not any idea what these mysteries really are, as is amply proved by all his remarks, we agree with him, as we have endeavoured to show above. He then proceeds to treat of the system of the Peratee, to whom we have already referred, and whose Mysteries (Hippolytus calls them their " blasphemy against Christ ") had been kept secret " for many years." We know from other sources that the school was prior to Clement of Alex andria. The system of the Peratse was based on an analogy with sidereal considerations, and depended on the tradition of the ancient Chaldsean star-cult. In Book iv., Hippolytus has already endeavoured to refute the Chaldaean system of the star-spheres; but though he makes some good points against the vulgar

astrology of the time, he does not affect the mysterious doctrine of the septenary spheres, of which the empirical horoscopists had long lost the secret, and for which they had substituted the physical planets. Hippolytus had the Peratic school especially in mind in his attempted refutation of the art of the astrologers and mathematicians, of which, however, he admits he had no practical knowledge, but space compels us simply to refer the student to the fourth book of his Philosophumena for the outline of astrology which the Church Father presents. According to the Peratic school, the universe was symbolized by a circle enclosing a triangle. The triangle denoted the primal trichotomy into the three worlds, ingenerable, self-generable, and generable. Thus there were for them three aspects of the Logos, or, from another point of view, three Gods, or three Logoi, or three Minds, or three Men. When the world-process had reached the completion of its devolution, the Saviour descended from the ingenerable world or 0eon; the type of the Saviour is that of a man perfected, " with a threefold nature, and threefold body, and threefold power, having in himself all [species of] concretions and potentialities from the three divisions of the universe." According to the Pauline phrase : " It pleased Him that in him should dwell all fulness (pleroma) bodily."

It is from the two higher worlds, the ingenerable and self-generable, that the seeds of all kinds of potentialities are sent down into this generable or formal world. us that the founders of the school were a certain Euphrates (whom Origen calls the founder of those Ophites to whom Celsus referred about 175 A.D.) and Celbes, whom he elsewhere calls Acembes and Ademes, proceeds to tell us something more of the Chaldsean art. He then says that he will quote from a number of Peratic treatises to show that their ideas were similar to those of the Chaldseans. The Saviour has not only a human but a cosmic task to perform; the cosmic task is to separate the good from the bad among the sidereal powers and influences ; the same peculiarity of soteriology is brought into prominence in the Pistis Sophia treatise, to which we shall refer later on. The " wars in heaven " precede the conflict of good and evil on earth.

The treatise from which Hippolytus proceeds to A Direct quote is evidently a Gnostic commentary on an old Babylonian or Syrian cosmogonic scripture, which the commentator endeavours to explain in Greek mythological terms. The beginning of this mysterious treatise runs as follows : "I am the voice of awakening from slumber in the seon (world) of night. Henceforth I begin to strip naked the power that proceed eth from Chaos. It is the power of the abysmal slime, which raiseth up the clay of the imperishable vast moist [principle], the whole might of convulsion of the colour of water, ever moving, supporting the steady, checking the tottering, . . . the faithful steward of the track of the aethers, rejoicing in that which streameth forth from the twelve founts of the Law, the power which

taketh its type from the impress of the power of the invisible waters above." This power is called Thalassa, evidently the Thalatth (Tiamat), or World-Mother, of the Baby lonians. The twelve sources are also called twelve mouths, or pipes, through which the world-powers pour hissing. It is the power which is surrounded by a dodecagonal pyramid or dodecahedron — a hint which should persuade astrologers to reconsider their " signs of the zodiac." Hippolytus' quotations and summary here become very obscure and require a critical treatment which has not yet been accorded them ; we are finally told that the matter is taken from a treatise dealing with the formal or generable world, for it is denominated The Proasteioi up to the ^Ether ; that is to say, the hierarchies of powers as far as the aether, which were probably represented diagramatically by a series of concentric circles, a " proasteion " being the space round a city's walls.

Hippolytus here again points out the correspon dence between astrological symbolism and the teaching of this school of Gnosticism ; it is, he says, simply astrology allegorized, or rather we should say cosmogony theologized. These Peratics, or Transcendentalists, derive their name from the following considerations. They believed that nothing which exists by generation can survive destruction, and thus the The sphere of generation is also the fate-sphere. He then of the Name. who knows nothing beyond this, is bound to the wheel of fate ; but " he who is conversant with the compulsion of generation [samsdra], and the paths through which man has entered into the [generable] world," can proceed through and pass beyond (transcend) destruction. This destruction is the " Water " which is the " generation of men," and which is the element in which the hierarchies of generation hold their sway, and have their being. It is called water because it is of that colour, namely, the lower ether.

The treatise from which Hippolytus quotes, again dives into the depths of mythology, and among other things adduces the Myth of the Going-forth, and its mystical interpretation ; finally, the Gnostic com mentator explains the opening verses of the proem to the fourth canonical Gospel. Hippolytus, however, is beginning to be baffled by the amazing intricacy of the system, as he tells us, and thus breaks off, and apparently takes up another treatise from which to quote. The new treatise is of an exceedingly mystical character, and seemingly deals with the psychological physiology of the school. The universe is figured forth as triple : Father, logical0" ^on' anc^ Matter (Hyle), each of endless potentialities. between the immovable Father and moving Matter. At one time He is turned to the Father and receives the powers in His disk (face, or " person "), and then turning casts them into Matter, which is devoid of form; and thus the Matter is moulded and the formal world is produced.

We here see an attempt to graft a higher teaching, of the same nature as the Platonic doctrine of types and ideas, on to the primitive symbolism of imper fectly observed natural phenomena. The sun is the Father, the moon is the Son, and the earth is Matter. The moon is figured as a serpent, owing to its serpen tine path, and its phases are imagined as the turning of its face towards the sun, and again towards the earth. If this is correct, however, the immobility of the sun and the motion of the earth give us reason to believe that the Chaldaeans were better acquainted with astronomy than the followers of the far later Hipparcho-Ptolemaeic geocentricism. The Gnostic writer has also a correct theory of magnetic and other influences, which he quaintly sets forth. We can, moreover, distinguish three strata of inter pretation : (i.) metaphysical and spiritual — the ideal world, the intermediate, and the visible universe; (ii.) the world of generation — with its sun, moon and earth-forces; and (iii.) the analogical psychophysiological process in man.

The last is thus explained. The brain is the Father, the cerebellum the Son, and the medulla Matter or Hyle. " The cerebellum, by an ineffable and inscrutable process, attracts through the pineal gland the spiritual and life-giving essence from the vaulted chamber [? third ventricle]. And on receiving this, the cerebellum [also] in an ineffable manner imparts the ' ideas,' just as the Son does, to Matter; or, in other words, the seeds and the genera of things produced according to the flesh flow along into the spinal marrow." And, adds Hippolytus, the main secrets of the school depend on a knowledge of these correspondences, but it would be impious for him to say anything more on the matter — a scruple which is surprising to find in a Church Father, and especially in Hippolytus, who devoted the second and third books of his Refutation to an exposition of the Mysteries.

Now it is a curious fact that these two books have been bodily removed from the MS. Did Hippolytus. Hippolytus, then, reveal too much of the "plagiarism by anticipation" of the rites and doctrines of the Church, and did those who came after him consider it unwise to keep such evidence on record ? For one would have thought that above all things the orthodox Fathers would have delighted in parading the possession of such information before the heathen and heretics, and would have specially preserved these two books from destruction. But indeed it is altogether strange that this, the most important Refutation of all the hseresiological documents which we possess, was made no use of by the successors of Hippolytus. The only MS. known to the western world was brought from Mount Athos in 1842, and its contents (because of the number of direct quotations) have revolutionized our ideas on Gnosticism on many points. Had the two books on the Mysteries been preserved, we might perchance have had our ideas even further revolutionized.

CLOSELY connected with the Gnostics above described are the Sethians, to whom Hippolytus next devotes Seth. his attention. He speaks of their "innumerable commentaries," and refers his readers especially to a certain treatise, called The Paraphrase of Seth, for a digest of their doctrines. But whether or not Hippolytus quotes from this document himself, or from some other treatise or treatises, is not apparent. The title, Paraphrase of Seth, is exceedingly puzzling ; it is difficult to say what is the exact meaning of the term " paraphrasis" and the doctrines set forth by Hippolytus have no connection with the Sethlegend. The term Sethians, as used by Hippolytus, is not only puzzling on this account, but also because his summary differs entirely from the scraps of inform ation on the system of the Sethites supposed to have been mentioned in his lost Syntagma, and allied to the doctrine of the Nicolaitans by the epitomizers. In the latter fragments the hero Seth was chosen as the type of the good man, the perfect, the pro totype of Christ.

Can it possibly be that there is a connection between the name " Seth " and the mysterious " Setheus " of the Codex Brucianus ? And further, are we to look for the origin of the Sethians along the Egyptian line of tradition of the Hyksos-cult, the Semitic background of which made Seth the Mystery-God ? The Sethians of whom we are treating begin An Outline with a trinity ; Light, Spirit and Darkness. The System. Spirit is not, however, to be thought of as a breath or wind, but as it were a subtle odour spreading everywhere. All three principles then are inter mingled one with another. And the Darkness strives to retain the Light and the Spirit, and imprison the light-sparks in matter ; while the Light and the Spirit, on their side, strive to raise their powers aloft and rescue them from the Darkness.

All genera and species and individuals, nay the heaven and earth itself, are images of " seals " ; they are produced according to certain pre-existent types. It was from the first concourse of the three original principles or powers that the first great form was produced, the impression of the great seal, namely, heaven and earth. This is symbolized by the worldegg in the womb of the universe, and the rest of creation is worked out on the same analogy. The egg is in the waters, which are thrown into waves by the creative power, and it depends on the nature of the waves as to what the various creatures will be. Here we have the whole theory of vibrations and the germ-cell idea in full activity.

Into the bodies thus brought into existence by the waves of the waters (the vehicles of subtle matter) the light-spark and the fragrance of the Spirit descend, and thus " mind or man " is " moulded into various species." " And this [light-spark] is a perfect god, who from the ingenerable Light from above, and from the Spirit, is borne down into the natural man, as into a shrine, by the tide of nature and the motion of the wind [the creative power which causes the waves], 'i . . Thus a minute spark, a divided splinter from above, like the ray of a star, has been mingled in the much compounded waters [bodies of various kinds of subtle matter] of many (existences). . . . Every thought, then, and solicitude actuating the Light from above is as to how and in what manner mind may be set free from death — the evil and dark body — from the ' father ' below, the [genera tive impulse] wind, which with agitation and tumult raised up the waves, and [finally] produced a perfect mind, his own son, and yet not his own in essence. For he [the rnind] was a ray from above, from that perfect Light, overpowered in the dark and fearsome, and bitter, and blood-stained water; he also is a light-spirit floating on the water."

The generative power is called not only " wind," but also " beast," and " serpent," the latter because of the hissing sound it produces, just like the whirling wind. Now the impure womb, or sphere of genera tion, can only produce mortal men, but the virgin or pure womb, the Sphere of Light, can produce men immortal or gods. It is the descent of the Perfect Man or Logos into the pure man that alone can still the birth-pangs of the carnal man. This natural and spiritual process is shown forth in the Mysteries; after passing through the Lesser The . Mysteries, which pertain to the cycle of generation, the candidate is washed or baptised, and stripping off the dress of a servant, puts on a heavenly garment, and drinks of the cup

of life-giving water. That is to say, he leaves his servile form, the body which is subjected to the necessity of generation and is thus a slave, and ascends in his spiritual body to the state where is the ocean of immortality. The Sethian school supported their theosophic tenets by analogies drawn from natural philosophy, and by the allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament; but, says Hippolytus, their system is nothing else than the tenets of the Orphic Mysteries, which were celebrated in Achaea at Phlium, long before the Eleusinian. No doubt the Sethians based their theories on one or more of the traditions of the Mystery-cult, but we need not follow Hippolytus in his selection of only one tradition, and that too in its grossest and most ignorant phase of vulgar phallicism.

The school seems also to have had affinities with the Hermetic tradition, and used the analogy of natural and " alchemical " processes for the explana tion of spiritual matters. For instance, after citing the example of the magnet, one of their books continues : " Thus the light-ray [human soul], mingled with the water [animal soul], having obtained through discipline and instruction its own proper region, hastens towards the Logos [divine soul] that comes down from above in servile form [body]; and along with the Logos becomes Logos there where the Logos has His being, more speedily than iron [hastens] to the magnet."

As previously remarked, the remains of the ancient bed of the stream of the Gnosis which we are endeavouring to survey, are so fragmentary, that nothing can be attempted, but a most imperfect outline, or rather a series of rough sketches of certain sec tions that some day further discovery may enable us to throw into the form of a map. Chronological indications are almost entirely wanting, and we can as yet form no idea of the correct sequence of these general Gnostic schools. We must therefore proceed at haphazard somewhat, and will next turn our attention to a school which Hippolytus (Bk. viii.) calls the Docetae, seeing that their tenets are very similar to those of the three schools of which we have just treated. There is nothing, however, to show why this name is especially selected, except the obscure reason that it is derived from the attempt of these Gnostics to theorise on " inaccessible and incom prehensible matter." It may, therefore, be possible that they believed in the doctrine of the nonreality of matter ; and that the name Docetae (" Illusionists ") is of similar derivation to the Maya-vadins of the Hindus. The system of this Gnostic circle bears a strong family likeness to the doctrines of the Basilidian and Valentinian schools ; but the doctrine of the non-physical nature of the body of the Christ, which is the general characteristic of ordinary Docetism, is not more prominent with them than with many other

schools. The outline of their tenets given by Hippolytus is as follows. The Primal Being is symbolized as the seed of a fig-tree, the mathematical point, which is every where, smaller than small, yet greater than great, containing in itself infinite potentialities. He is the " refuge of the terror-striken, the covering of the naked," and much else as allegorically set forth in the Scriptures. The manner of the infinite generation of things is also figured by the fig-tree, for from the seed comes the stem, then branches, and then leaves, and then fruit, the fruit in its turn containing seeds, and thence other stems, and so on in infinite manner ; so all things come forth. In this way, even before the sensible world was formed, there was an emanation of a divine or ideal world of three root-aeons, each consisting of so many sub-aeons, male-female; that is to say, worlds, or beings, or planes, of self-generating powers. And this aeon-world of Light came forth from the one ideal seed or root of the universe, the ingenerable. Then the host of self-generable aeons uniting together produce from the One Virgin (ideal cosmic substance), the Alone-begotten (-generated) one, the Saviour of the universe, the perfect aeon; containing in Himself all the powers of the ideal world of the aeons, equal in power in all things to the orignal seed of the universe, the ingenerable. Thus was the Saviour of the ideal universe produced, the perfect aeon. And thus all in that spiritual world was perfected, all being of the nature of That which transcends intellect, free from all deficiency. Thus

was accomplished the eternal and ideal world-process in the spaces of the aeons. Next with regard to the emanation of the ideal world into the sensible universe. The third root-aeon, in its turn, made itself threefold, containing in itself all the supernal potentialities. Thus, then, its Light shone down upon the primordial chaotic substance, and the souls of all genera and species of living beings were infused into it. And when the third aeon, or Logos, perceived that His ideas and impressions and types or seals (xapar^/oe?) — the souls — were seized upon by the darkness, He separated the light from the darkness, and placed a firmament between; but this was only done after all the infinite species of the third aeon had been intercepted in the darkness. And last of all the resemblance of the third aeon himself was impressed upon the lower universe, and this resemblance is a "life-giving fire, generated from the light." Now this fire is the creative god which fashions the world, as in the Mosaic account. This fabricating deity, having no substance of his own, uses the darkness (gross matter) as his substance, out of which he makes bodies, and thus perpetually treats despitefully the eternal attributes of light which are imprisoned in the darkness. Thus until the coming of the Saviour, there was a vast delusion of souls, for these "ideas" are called souls (\fsvxai) because they have been breathed out (aTro^vyelarai) from the (aeons) above. These souls spend their lives in darkness, passing from one to another of the bodies which are under the ward of the creative power or world-fabricator.

In support of this the Gnostic author refers to the saying : " And if ye will receive it, this is Elias that was for to come ; he that hath ears to hear, let him hear"; and also to Job ii. 9: "And I am a wanderer, changing place after place and house after house." The latter passage is found in the version of the Seventy, but is omitted in the English translation. It is by means of the Saviour that souls are set The Saviour. free from the c[rG[e of rebirth (metensomatosis), and faith is aroused in men that their sins should be remitted. Thus, then, the Alone-begotten Son gazing upon the soul-tragedy — the " images " of the supernal aeons changing perpetually from one body to another of the darkness — willed to descend for their deliverance.

Now the individual aeons above were not able to endure the whole fullness of the divine world, i.e., the Son; and had they beheld it they would have been thrown into confusion at its greatness and the glory of its power, and would have feared for their existence. So the Saviour indrew His glory into Himself, as it were the vastest of lightningflashes into the minutest of bodies, or as the sudden cessation of light when the eyelids close, and so descended to the heavenly dome; and reaching the star-belt there, again indrew His glory, for even the apparently most minute light-giver of the starsphere is a sun illuminating all space; and so the Saviour withdrew His glory again and entered into the domain of the third sphere of the third aeon. And so He entered even into the darkness; that is to say, was incarnated in a body.

And His baptism was in this wise : He washed himself in the Jordan (the stream of the Logos), and after this purification in the water He became possessed of a spiritual body, a copy or impression of his virgin-made physical body ; so that when the world-ruler (the god of generation) condemned his own plasm (the physical body) to death, i.e., the cross, the spiritual body, nourished in the virgin physical body, might strip off the physical body, and nail it to the "tree," and thus the Christ would triumph over the powers and authorities of the world-ruler, and not be found naked ; for He would put on His new spiritual body of perfection instead of another body of flesh. Thus the saying : " Except a man be born of water and of the spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of the heavens ; that which is born of the flesh is flesh."

As to Jesus Christ, the Gnostic writer wisely remarks that this ideal can be seen from many sides ; that each school has its own view, some a low, some a high view ; and that this is in the nature of things. Finally none but the real Gnostics, that is those who have passed through initiations similar to those of Jesus, can understand the mystery face to face. It would seem hardly necessary to point out to the student of Gnosticism the striking similarity between the general outlines of this system and the leading ideas of the contents of the Bruce and Askew Codices ; and yet no one has previously remarked them.

HIPPOLYTUS devotes his next section to a certain Monoi'mus, who is only mentioned by one other hseresiologist, namely Theodoret, in a brief para graph. Monoi'mus was an Arabian and lived some where in the latter half of the second century. His system is based on the idea of the Heavenly Man, the universe, and the Son of this Man, the perfect man, all other men being but imperfect reflections of the one ideal type. His general ideas attach themselves to the cycle of Number- Gnostic literature of which we are treating, and are elaborated by many mathematical and geometrical considerations from the Pythagorean and Platonic traditions. The theory of numbers and the geometrical composition of the universe from elements which are symbolized by the five Platonic solids — namely, the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron and icosahedron — are developed. All these geometrical symbols are produced by the monad, which he calls the iota, the yod, and the " one horn." It is our old friend the serpentine force, the horn of plenty, the rod of Moses and of Hermes ; in other words, it is the atom which is said by seers to be a " conical " swirl of forces. This monad is in numbers the decad, the perfect number and completion of the first series of numbers, after which the whole process begins again.

Now it was Moses' rod which brought to pass the plagues of Egypt according to the myth. These " plagues " are nothing else but transmutations of the matter of the physical body, e.g., water into blood, etc., all of which is quaintly worked out by the writer. The whole of this system, indeed, opens up a number of important considerations which would lead us far beyond the scope of the present essay. Monoimus was undoubtedly a contemporary of the Valentinian school, if not a pupil of Valentinus, and the garbled version of his system as preserved by Hippolytus can be made to yield many important points which will throw light on the " theological arithmetic " of the Gnostic doctors. This^ mayg be proved some day still to preserve a seed which may grow into a tree of real mathematical knowledge.

We will conclude our sketch of the tenets of Monoimus by quoting his opinion on the way to seek ^°w to Seek for God. In a letter to a certain Theophrastus, he writes : " Cease to seek after God (as without thee), and the universe, and things similar to these ; seek Him from out of thyself, and learn who it is, who once and for all appropriateth all in thee unto Him self, and sayeth : * My god, my mind, my reason, my soul, my body.' And learn whence is sorrow and joy, and love and hate, and waking though one would not, and sleeping though one would not, and getting angry though one would not, and falling in love though one would not. And if thou shouldst closely investigate these things, thou wilt find Him in thyself, one and many, just as the atom ; thus finding from thyself a way out of thyself."

All of this re-echoes very distinctly the teaching of the earlier Trismegistic literature.

BEFORE returning again towards the time of the Obscurity of origins along another line of tradition, of which one the Subject. or £wo obscure indications still remain — the Carpocrates-Cerinthus trace — we will briefly refer to the obscure chaos of tendencies classed together under the term " Cainite " and its variants. Our sources of information are scanty, and (if we exclude the mere mention of the name) are confined to Irenseus and Epiphanius ; the latter, moreover, copies from Irenseus, and with the exception of his own reflections and lucubrations, has only a scrap or two of fresh infor mation to add. This line of tradition is again generally classed as " Ophite," and as usual we find that its adherents called themselves simply Gnostics. They were distinguished by the honour they paid to Cain and Judas ; which fact, taken by itself, was sufficient to overwhelm them with the execrations of the orthodox, who ascribed the perpetration of every iniquity to them. Thus we find that Epiphanius, who wrote two hundred years after Irenaeus, embroiders considerably on the account of the Bishop of Lyons, even where he is in other respects simply copying from his predecessor. We will now proceed to see the reason why these Gnostics entertained an apparently so strange belief.

If the reader will bear in mind the systems of Justinus and of the Sethians, he will be in a better position to comprehend what follows. The main features of the system of these Gnostics, then, is as follows. The creator of the world was not the God over all ; the absolute power from above was stronger than the weaker (va-repa — hystera) power of generation, which was symbolized as the power of the impure world-womb, containing heaven and earth within it — the sensible world. But this sensible world was, as it were, an after-birth (iWe/oa — hystera), compared with the true birth from the virgin spiritual womb, the ideal world of the aeons above. Epiphanius has made a great muddle of this part of the system; it is evidently consanguineous with the Valentinian " deficiency " (va-reprj/ma — hysterema), or " abortion," the sensible world, without or external to the ideal fullness or perfection (TrX^/aco^ta — pleroma), or world of the aeons.

The inferior power, therefore, was the God of generation, the superior the God of enlightenment TheEnemies and wisdom. The Old Testament idea of God went the Friends no further than obedience to the commands of the inferior power. Those who had obeyed its behests were regarded as the worthies of old by the followers of the External Law, who, seeing no further, had in their traditions vilified all who refused to follow this law, the commands of the inferior power of generation. Thus Abel and Jacob and Lot and Moses were praised by the followers of the law of generation; whereas in reality it was the opponents of these who ought to be praised, as followers of the Higher Law who despised the laws of the powers of generation, and were thus Q

protected by Wisdom and taken to herself, to the aeon above. They therefore claimed that Cain and Esau, and the inhabitants of the Cities of the Plain, and Coran, Dathan and Abiram, were types of those individuals or nations who had followed a higher law, and who, apparently, were calumniated by the followers of Yahweh. We can here see very plainly the traces of the same antitheses as those worked out by Justinus ; the influence of the psychic powers or angels being traceable along the Abel line of descent, and that of the spiritual powers along the Cain line. Abel was the offerer of blood-sacrifices, while Cain offered the fruits of the field. This antithetical device, in one form or other, was common enough — as for instance, the later Ebionite antitheses of superior and inferior men (Isaac-Ishmael, Jacob-Esau, MosesAaron), or the Marcionite antitheses of the God of freedom and the God of the law, the God of the Christ and the Yahweh of the Old Testament — but the school whose tenets we are describing, seem, in their contempt for Yahweh, to have pushed their theories to the most extravagant conclusion of any. This is especially brought out in their ideas of New Testament history, which, in spite of their strangeness, may nevertheless contain a small trace of the true tradition of the cause of Jesus' death.

This Gnostic circle had a number of writings, Judas. chief amongst which were two small summaries of instruction, one called The Gospel of Judas, and the other The Ascent of Paul. To take the latter first; The Ascent of Paul purported to contain the record of the ineffable things which Paul is reported to have seen when he ascended into the third heaven. Whether this was the same as The Apocalypse of Paul referred to by Augustine is uncertain; in any case it is lost. A more orthodox version of one of the documents of the same cycle has come down to us in The Vision of Paul, a translation of which may be read in the last volume of the AnteNicene Christian Library (1897). If we can rely on this title, for which Epiphanius alone is responsible, the school of the Cainites is consequently postPauline.

But the strangest and, from one point of view, the most interesting development of their theory, was the view they took of Judas. The " Poor Men's " (Ebionite) tradition had consistently handed over Judas to universal execration; there was, however, apparently another tradition, presumably Essene in the first place, which took a different view of the matter. Obscure traces of this seem to be preserved in the unintelligent Irenaeus- Epiphanius account of the Cainite doctrines. This circle of students looked upon Judas as a man far advanced in the discipline of the Gnosis, and one who had a very clear idea of the true God as distinguished from the God of generation; he conse quently taught a complete divorcement from the things of the world and thus from the inferior power, which had made the heaven, the world and the flesh. Man was to ascend to the highest region through the crucifixion of the Christ. The Christ was the spirit which came down from above, in order that the

stronger power of the spiritual world might be perfected in man ; and so Jesus triumphed over the weaker power of generation at the expense of his body, which he handed over to death, one of the manifestations of the God of generation. This was the christological doctrine of the school, and it was apparently, judging from the " he says " of Epiphanius, taken from The Gospel of Judas. But besides this general mystical teaching, there A Scrap of was a}so a historical tradition: that Jesus, after becoming the Christ and teaching the higher doctrine, fell away, in their opinion, and endeavoured to overset the law and corrupt the holy doctrine, and therefore Judas had him handed over to the authorities. That is to say, those to whom Jesus originally taught the higher doctrine considered that his too open preaching to the people was a divulging of the Mysteries, and so finally brought about his condemnation for blasphemy by the orthodox Jewish authorities.

Yet another more mystical tradition, preserved in one of their books, declared that, on the contrary, the Christ had not made a mistake, but that all had been done according to the heavenly wisdom. For the world-rulers knew that if the Christ were betrayed to the cross, that is to say, were incarnated, the inferior power would be drained out of them and they would ascend to the spiritual aeon. Now Judas knew this, and, in his great faith, used every means to bring about His betrayal, and in this way the salvation of the world. These Gnostics conse quently praised Judas as being one of the main factors in the scheme of salvation; without him the mystic " salvation of the cross " would not have been consummated, nor the consequent revelation of the realms above.

The Cainite circle, therefore, from their doctrines appear to have been rigid ascetics. But, says Epiphanius, embroidering on Irenseus, they were very dreadful people, and, like Carpocrates, taught that a man could not be saved without going through every kind of experience. We will therefore now take a brief glance at the views of the Carpocratians.

OUR main source of information is Irenseus ; Tertullian, Hippolytus and Epiphanius simply copy their predecessor. Carpocrates, or Carpocras, was (according to Eusebius) a Platonic philosopher who taught at Alexandria in the reign of Hadrian (A.D. 117-138); he was also the head of a Gnostic circle, whom the Church fathers call Carpocratians, but who called themselves simply Gnostics. With regard to the charge which Epiphanius brings against them two hundred and fifty years afterwards, it is evidently founded on a complete misunderstanding of the jumbled account of Irenseus, if not of malice pre pense; for the Bishop of Lyons distinctly says, that he by no means believes that they did the things which he thinks they ought to have done, if they had consistently carried out their teachings ! As a matter of fact, the whole confusion arises through

the incapacity of the latter Church Father to underud the elements of the doctrine of rebirth. The main tenets of the school were as follow The sensible world was made by the fabricating Their Uoa powers, or builders, far inferior to the ineffable power of the unknown ingenerable Father. JCMIS was the son of Joseph and Mary, and was born like all other men; he differed from the rest in that his soul, being strong and pure, remembend what it saw in its orbit round ;or conversation with" the ineffable Father. This is also the idea Jying behind the Pythagorean, Platonic and Hermetic traditions'! of the orderly course of the soul in harmonious circuit round the Spiritual Sun. in the Plain of Truth, when it is in it$ own nature. In consequence of this reminiscence ^which is the source of all wisdom and virtue") the Father clothed him with powers, whereby he might escape from the dominion of the rulers of the world. and passing through all their spheres, and being freed from each, finally ascend to the Father. In like manner all souls of a like nature who put forth similar efforts, shall ascend to the Father. Though the soul of Jesus was brought up in the ordinary Jewish views, he soared above them, and thus by the powers he received from above, he triumphed over human passions.

Relieving, then, that all souls which rise above the constraints of the world-building rulers, will receive similar powers and perform like wonders, these Gnostics still further claimed that some of their number had actually attained to the same degree of perfection as Jesus, if not to a higher degree, and were stronger than Peter and Paul, and the other Apostles who had attained similar powers. In fact they boldly taught that men could reach higher degrees of illumination than Jesus; it is not, however, clear whether they made the usual dis tinction between Jesus and the Christ. These powers were of a " magical " nature, and the next paragraph of Irenseus puts us strongly in mind of the tenets of the " Simonian " school. Such ideas seem to have been very prevalent, so much so that Irenseus complains that outsiders were induced to think that such views were the common belief of Christianity.

that there is no essential evil in the universe, Re incarnation, but that things are bad and good in man's opinion only. Let us, therefore, see how Irenseus, from his summary of their doctrine of rebirth, arrives at this generalisation. The soul has to pass through every kind of existence and activity in its cycle of rebirth. Irenseus is apparently drawing his information from a MS. which asserted that this could be done in one life; that is to say, apparently, that some souls then existing in the world could pay their karmic debt in one life. For the MS. quotes the saying, " Agree with thine adversary quickly whiles thou art in the way with him, lest at any time thine adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to his officer, and thou be cast into prison. Amen, I say unto thee, thou shalt not come forth thence till thou has paid the utter-

most farthing." Now, the adversary is the accuser (diabolus), that is to say the karmie record in the man's own nature; the judge is the chief of the world-building powers; the officer is the builder of the new body; the prison is the body. Thus the MS. explains the text — precisely the same exegesis as is given to it in the Pistis Sophia treatise, which explains all in the fullest manner on the lines of re incarnation and what Indian philosophers call karma. But not so will Irenseus have it. He asserts that the doctrine means that the soul must pass through all experience good and bad, and until every experience has been learned, no one can be set free. That some souls can do all this in one life ! That the Carpocratians, therefore, must have indulged in the most unmentionable crimes because they wished to fill full the tale of all experience good and bad, and so come to an end of the necessity of experience.

Irenseus, however, immediately afterwards adds that he does not believe the Carpocratians actually do such things, although he is forced to deduce such a logical consequence from their books. It is, however, evident that the whole absurd con clusion is entirely due to the stupidity of the Bishop of Lyons, who, owing to his inability to understand the most elementary facts of the doctrine of reincarnation, has started with entirely erroneous premises, although the matter was as clear as daylight to a beginner in Gnosticism. The circle of the Carpocratians is said to have established a branch at Home, about 150, under a certain Marcellina. They had pictures and statues of many great teachers who were held in honour by their school, such as Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, and also a portrait of Jesus.

It is curious to remark that Celsus, as quoted by Origen (c. 62), in referring to these Marcellians, also mentions the Harpocratians who derived their tenets from Salome. Is it possible that this is the correct form of the name, and not Carpocratians ? Harpocrates was the Graecised form of Horus, the MysteryGod of the Egyptians ; and Salome, we know, was a prominent figure in the lost Gospel according to the Egyptians. WE next pass on to the contradictory and manifestly absurd legends, which Patristic writers have woven round the second best-known name of the Carpocratian circle. We have already referred to the extraordinary blunder of Epiphanius, who has ascribed a whole system of the Gnosis, which he found in Ireneeus assigned simply to a " distinguished teacher " (probably the Valentinian Marcus), to this Epiphanes ; the Greek for " distinguished " being also " epiphanes"

This is excusable in a certain measure, seeing that Epiphanius wrote at the end of the fourth century (at least 250 years after the time of the actual Epiphanes) when any means of discrediting a heretic were con sidered justifiable ; but what shall we say of Clement of Alexandria, who is generally fair, and who lived in the same century as Epiphanes ? His blunder is even more extraordinary. This is his legend. Epiphanes was the son of Carpocrates and Alexandria, a lady of Cephallenia. He died at the early age of seventeen, and was worshipped as a god with the most elaborate and lascivious rites by the Cephallenians, in the great temple of Same, on the day of the new moon.

Such an extraordinary legend could not longescape the penetrating criticism of modern scholar ship, and as early as Mosheim the key was found to the mystery. Volkmar has worked this out in detail, showing that the festival at Same was in honour of the moon-god, and accompanied with licentious rites. It was called the Epiphany (ra 'Eiri^ajua) in honour of Epiphanes (6 'ETn^awj?), the " newlyappearing one," the new moon. This moon lasted some seventeen days. Thus Clement of Alexandria, deceived by the similarity of the names and also by the story of licentious rites, bequeathed to posterity a scandalous libel. It is almost to be doubted whether any Epiphanes existed. Clement further asserts that among the Carpocratians one of their most circulated books was a treatise On Justice, of which he had seen a copy. He ascribes this to Epiphanes, but it is scarcely possible to believe that a boy of seventeen or less could have composed an abstract dissertation on justice.

We thus come to the conclusion that the circle in Alexandria at the beginning of the second century, and that some of their ideas were set forth in a book concerning justice, a copy of which had come into the hands of Clement. This Gnostic community was much exercised with the idea of communism as practised by the early Christian circles; being also students of Plato, they wished to reduce the idea to the form of a philosophical prin ciple and carry it out to its logical conclusion. The false ideas of meum and tuum were no longer to exist; private property was the origin of all human miseries and the departure from the happy days of early freedom. There was, therefore, to be community of everything, wives and husbands included — thus carrying out in some fashion that most curious idea, of Plato's as set forth in The Republic. We have, however, no reliable evidence that our Gnostics carried these ideas into practice ; it is also highly improbable that men of education and refinement, as the Gnostics usually were, who came to such views through the Pythagorean and Platonic discipline, and through the teachings of Jesus — the sine qua non condition of such ideal communities being that they should consist of "gnostics" and be ruled by " philosophers " — should have turned their meetings into orgies of lasciviousness. Such, however, is the accusation brought against them by Clement. This has already been in part refuted by what has been said above ; but it is not improbable that there were communities at Alexandria and elsewhere, calling themselves Christian, who did confuse the Agapae or Love-feasts of the early times with the orgies and feasts of the ignorant populace. The Pagans brought such accusations against the Christians indiscrimi-

nately, and the Christian sects against one another; and it is quite credible that such abuses did creep in among the ignorant and vicious. The Carpocratian school has been sometimes The Monadic claimed, though I think improperly, as the origi nator of the so-called Monadic Gnosis. This idea has been worked out in much detail by Neander. The following summary by Salmon will, however, be sufficient for the general reader to form an idea of the theory. " From one eternal Monad all existence has flowed, and to this it strives to return. But the finite spirits who rule over several portions of the world counteract this universal striving after unity. From them the different popular religions, and in particular the Jewish, have proceeded. Perfection is attained by those souls who, led on by reminis cences of their former conditions, soar above all limitation and diversity to the contemplation of the higher unity. They despise the restriction imposed by the mundane spirits; they regard externals as of no importance, and faith and love as the only essentials; meaning by faith, mystical brooding of the mind absorbed in the original unity. In this way they escape the dominion of the finite mundane spirits; their souls are freed from imprisonment in matter, and they obtain a state of perfect repose (corresponding to the Buddhist Nirvana) when they have completely ascended above the world of appearance."

CONTINUING to pick our way back along this trace towards the times of the origins, we next come upon the circle of the Cerinthians (or the Merinthians, according to the variant of Epiphanius). They are said to derive their name from a certain Cerinthus, who is placed in " apostolic times," that is to say the latter half of the first century. Epiphanius has busied himself exceedingly over Cerinthus, and cleverly made him a scapegoat for the The " pillar-apostles' " antagonism to Paul. Most writers the "Pillarhave followed his lead, and explained away a number of compromising statements in the Acts and Pauline Letters by this device. Impartial criticism, however, has to reject the lucubrations of the late Epiphanius, and go back to the short account of Irenseus, from whom all later writers have copied. Irenssus, who was himself a full century after Cerinthus, has only a brief paragraph on the subject.

Cerinthus is the strongest trace between Ebionism, or the original external non- Pauline tradition, and the beginning of the second century. He is supposed to have come into personal contact with John, the reputed writer of the fourth Gospel ; but the same story is told of the mythic Ebion, and it must there fore be dismissed as destitute of all historical value. Cerinthus is said to have been trained in the " Egyptian discipline," and to have taught in Asia Minor. The Egyptian discipline is supposed to mean the Philonic school, but this is a mere assumption. The Over- Jn any case the importance of Cerinthus, whom some Apocalypse. Gnostics claimed to have been the writer of the Apocalypse orthodoxly ascribed to John, is that his name has preserved one of the earliest forms of Christian tradition. Its cosmogony declared the stupendous excellence of the God over all, beyond the subordinate power, the World-fashioner. Its christology declared that Jesus was son of Joseph and Mary ; that at his " baptism " the Christ, the " Father in the form of a dove," descended upon him, and only then did he begin to prophesy and do mighty works, and preach the hitherto unknown Father (unknown to the Jews), the God over all. That the Christ then left him ; and then Jesus suffered, and rose again (that is, appeared to his followers after death).

Such is the account of Irenseus, which seems to be straightforward and reliable enough as far as it goes. The scripture of the Cerinthians was not the recension of the Sayings ascribed to " Matthew," but a still earlier collection in Hebrew. All other collections and recensions were rejected as utterly apocryphal. The Greek writer of the fourth canonical Gospel is said to have composed his account in opposi tion to the school of Cerinthus, but this hypothesis is not borne out by any evidence.

WE have now got back to such early times that even the faintest glimmer of historical light fails us ; we " Which are deep down in the sombre region of legend and speculation. We will, therefore, plunge no farther into the dark depths of the cave of the origins, but once more retrace our steps to the mouth of the cavern, where at least some fitful gleams of daylight struggle through. But before doing so, we must call the reader's attention to a just discernible shadow of early Gnosticism, the circle of the Nicolaitans. These Gnostics are of special interest to the orthodox, because the overwriter of the Apocalypse has twice gone out of his way to tell us that he hates their doings. Encouraged by this phrase, Irenseus includes the Nicolaitans in the writer's condemnation of some of the members of the church of Pergamus, who apparently "ate things sacrificed to idols and committed fornication." Subsequent hseresiologists, in their turn encouraged by Irenseus, added further embellishments, until finally Epiphanius makes Nicolaus the father of every enormity he had collected or invented against the Gnostics. And then, with all this " evidence " of his iniquity before him, Epiphanius proceeds rhetorically to address the shade of the unfortunate Gnostic : " What, then, am I to say to thee, O Nicolaus ? " For ourselves we are surprised that so inventive a genius as the Bishop of Salamis should have drawn breath even to put so rhetorical a question.

Tradition claims Nicolaua as an ascetic, and relates an exaggerated instance of his freedom from passion. Even granted that he taught that the eating of sacrificial viands was not a deadly sin, there seems no reason why we to-day should follow these Church Fathers in their condemnation of everything but their own particular view of the Christ's doctrine.

LET us now return to the historical twilight of the The Master second century, and turn our attention to the great Basilidian and Valentinian developments. But before doing so, it will be convenient to give a brief sketch of the great and contemporaneous Marcionite move ment, which at one time threatened to absorb the whole of Christendom. The method of this school was the direct prototype of the method of modern criticism. Its conclusions, however, were far more sweeping ; for it not only rejected the Old Testament entirely, but also the whole of the documents of the " in order that it might be fulfilled " school of Gospelcompilation. The predecessor of Marcion is said to have been a certain Cerdo, of Syrian extraction, who flourished at Rome about 135 A.D. But the fame of Marcion so eclipsed the name of his preceptor, that Patristic writers frequently confuse not only their teachings but even the men themselves. It is interesting to note that, though Cerdo's relationship with the Church of Rome was unsettled, no distinct sentence of

excommunication is recorded against him; it would, therefore, appear that the idea of a rigid canon of orthodoxy was not yet developed even in the exclusive mind of the Roman presbytery. It was no doubt the success of Marcion that precipitated the formulation of the idea of the canon in the mind of the Roman church, the pioneer of subsequent orthodoxy.

MARCION was a rich shipowner of Sinope, the chief port of Pontus. on the southern shore of the Black Sea ; he was also a bishop and the son of a bishop. His chief activity at Rome may be placed somewhere between the years 150 and 160. At first he was in communion with the church at Rome, and contributed handsomely to its funds; as, however, the presbyters could not explain his difficulties and refused to face the important questions he set before them, he is said to have threatened to make a schism in the church ; and apparently was finally excommunicated. But as a matter of fact the origin of Marcionism is entirely wrapped in obscurity, and we know nothing of a reliable nature of the lives of either Cerdo or Marcion.

The Church writers at the end of the second century, -who are our best authorities, cannot tell The the story of the beginning of the movement Marcionism. with any certainty. For all we know, Marcion may have developed his theories long before he came to Rome, and may have based them on information he gleaned and opinions he heard on his long voyages. This much we know, that the views of Marcion spread rapidly over the " whole world," to use the usual Patristic phrase for the GraBco-Roman dominions ; and as late as the fifth century we hear of Theodoret converting more than a thousand Marcionites. In Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, Syria, Asia Minor and Persia, Marcionite churches sprang up, splendidly organised, with their own bishops and the rest of the ecclesiastical discipline, with a cult and service of the same nature as those of what subsequently became the Catholic Church. Orthodoxy had not declared for any party as yet, and the Marcionite view had then as good a chance as any other of becoming the universal one. What then was the secret of Marcion's success ? As already pointed out, it was the same as that of the success of modern criticism as applied to the problem of the Old Testament.

Marcion's view was in some respects even more The "Higher moderate than the judgment of some of our modern thinkers; he was willing to admit that the Yahweh of the Old Testament was just. With great acumen he arranged the sayings and doings ascribed to Yahweh by the writers, and compilers, and editors of the heterogeneous books of the Old Testament collection, in parallel columns, so to say, with the sayings and teachings of the Christ — in a series of antitheses which brought out in startling fashion the fact, that though the best of the former might be ascribed to the idea of a Just God, they were foreign to the ideal of the Good God preached by the Christ. We know how in these latter days the best minds in the Church have rejected the horrible sayings and doings ascribed to God in some of the Old Testament documents, and we thus see how Marcion formulated a protest which must have already declared itself in the hearts of thousands of the more enlightened of the Christian name.

As for the New Testament, in Marcion's time, the idea of a canon was not yet or was only just being thought of. Marcion, too, had an idea of a canon, but it was the antipodes of the views which afterwards became the basis of the orthodox canon. The Christ had preached a universal doctrine, a new revelation of the Good God, the Father over all. They who tried to graft this on to Judaism, the imperfect creed of one small nation, were in grievous error, and had totally misunderstood the teaching of the Christ. The Christ was not the Messiah promised to the Jews. That Messiah was to be an earthly king, was intended for the Jews alone, and had not yet come. Therefore the pseudo-historical " in order that it might be fulfilled " school had adulterated and garbled the original Sayings of the Lord, the universal glad tidings, by the unintelligent and erroneous glosses they had woven into their collections of the teachings. It was the most terrific indictment of the cycle of New Testament "history" that has ever been formulated. Men were tired of all the contradictions and obscurities of the innumerable and mutually destructive variants of

the traditions concerning the person of Jesus. No man could say what was the truth, now that " history " had been so altered to suit the new Messiah-theory of the Jewish converts. As to actual history, then, Marcion started with The Gospel pau] • he was the first who had really understood of Paul. the mission of the Christ, and had rescued the teaching from the obscurantism of Jewish sectarianism. Of the manifold versions of the Gospel, he would have the Pauline alone. He rejected every other recension, including those now ascribed to Matthew, Mark, and John. The Gospel according to Luke, the " follower of Paul," he also rejected, regarding it as a recension to suit the views of the Judaising party. His Gospel was presumably the collection of Sayings in use among the Pauline churches of his day. Of course the Patristic writers say that Marcion mutilated Luke's version; but it is almost impossible to believe that, if he did this, so keen a critic as Marcion should have retained certain verses which made against his strong anti-Judaistic views. The Marcionites, on the contrary, contended that their Gospel was written by Paul from the direct tradition, and that Luke had nothing to do with it. But this is also a difficulty, for it is highly improbable that Paul wrote any Gospel.

So many orthodox apologists wrote against Marcion after his death, that it is possible to recon struct almost the whole of his Gospel. It begins with the public preaching of the Christ at Capernaum; it is shorter than the present Luke document, and some writers of great ability have held that it was the original of Luke's version, but this is not very credible. As for the rest of the documents included in the present collection of the New Testament, Marcion would have nothing to do with any of them, except ten of the Letters of Paul, parts of which he also rejected as interpolations by the reconciliators of the Petro- Pauline controversy. These ten Letters were called The Apostle.

The longest criticism of Marcion's views is to be found in Tertullian's invective Against Marcion, written in 207 and the following years. This has always been regarded by the orthodox as a most brilliant piece of work; but by the light of the conclusions arrived at by the industry of modern criticism, and also to ordinary common sense, it appears but a sorry piece of angry rhetoric. Tertullian tries to show that Marcion taught two Gods, the Just and the Good. Marcion, however, taught that the idea of the Jews about God, as set forth in the Old Testament, was inferior and antagonistic to the ideal of the Good God revealed by the Christ. This he set forth in the usual Gnostic fashion. But we can hardly expect a dispassionate treatment of a grave problem, which has only in the last few years reached a satisfactory solution in Christendom, from the violent Tertullian, whose temper may be gleaned from his angry address to the Marcionites : " Now then, ye dogs, whom the apostle puts outside, and who yelp at the God of truth, let us come to your various questions ! These are the bones of contention, which ye are perpetually gnawing ! "

Enough has now been said to give the reader a general idea of the Marcionite position — a very strong one it must be admitted, both because of its simplicity and also because it formulated the protest of long slumbering discontent among the outer communities. It is, however, difficult to deduce anything like a clear system of cosmogony or christology from the onslaughts of the best known haeresiologists on Marcionite doctrines. It has even been doubted whether Marcion should be classed as a Gnostic, but this point is set at rest by the work of Eznik (Eznig or Esnig), an Armenian bishop, who flourished about 450 A.D. In his treatise The Destruction of False Doctrines, he devotes the fourth and last book to the Marcioriites, who seem to have been even at that late date a most flourishing body. Although it is doubted whether the ideas there described are precisely the same as the original system of Marcion, it is evident that the Marcionite tradition was of a distinctly Gnostic tendency, and that Marcion owed more to his predecessors in Gnosticism than was usully supposed prior to the first translation of Eznik's treatise (into French) in 1833.

It will be sufficient here to shorten Salmon's summary of this curious Marcionite myth, calling the reader's attention to the similarity of parts of its structure to the system of Justinus. There were three Heavens; in the highest was the Good God; in the intermediate the God of the Law; in the lowest, his Angels. Beneath lay Hyle or root-matter. The world was the joint product of the God of the Law and Hyle. The Creative A Marcionit* Power perceiving that the world was very good, desired to make man to inhabit it. So Hyle gave him his body and the Creative Power the breath of life, his spirit. And Adam and Eve lived in innocence in Paradise, and did not beget children.

And the God of the Law desired to take Adam from Hyle and make him serve him alone. So taking him aside, he said : " Adam, I am God and beside me there is no other; if thou worshippest any other God thou shalt die the death." And Adam on hearing of death was afraid, and withdrew himself from Hyle. Now Hyle had been wont to serve Adam ; but when she found that he withdrew from her, in revenge she filled the world with idolatry, so that men ceased to adore the Lord of Creation. Then was the Creator wrath, and as men died he cast them into Hell (Hades — the Unseen But at length the Good God looked down from Heaven, and saw the miseries which man suffered through Hyle and the Creator. And He took com passion on them, and sent them down His Son to deliver them, saying : " Go down, take on Thee the form of a servant [? a body], and make Thyself like the sons of the Law. Heal their wounds, give sight to their blind, bring their dead to life, perform with out reward the greatest miracles of healing; then will the God of the Law be jealous and instigate his servants to crucify thee. Then go down to Hell, which will open her mouth to receive Thee, supposing

Thee to be one of the dead. Then liberate the captives Thou shalt find there, and bring them up to Me." And thus the souls were freed from Hell and carried up to the Father. Whereupon the God of the Law was enraged, and rent his clothes and tore the curtain of his palace, and darkened the sun and veiled the world in darkness. Then the Christ descended a second time, but now in the glory of His divinity, to plead with the God of the Law. And the God of the Law was compelled to acknowledge that he had done wrong in thinking that there was no higher power than himself. And the Christ said unto him : " I have a controversy with thee, but I will take no other judge between us but thy own law. Is it not written in thy law that whoso killeth another shall himself be killed ; that whoso sheddeth innocent blood shall have his own blood shed ? Let me, then, kill thee and shed thy blood, for I am innocent and thou hast shed My blood."

And then He went on to recount the benefits He had bestowed on the children of the Creator, and how He had in return been crucified ; and the God of the Law could find no defence, and confessed and said : " I was ignorant ; I thought Thee but a man, and did not know Thee to be a god; take the revenge that is Thy due." And the Christ thereupon left him, and betook himself to Paul, and revealed the path of truth. The Marcionites were the most rigid of ascetics, abstaining from marriage, flesh and wine, the latter being excluded from their Eucharist. They also rejoiced beyond all other sects in the number of their martyrs. The Marcionites have also given us the The Title most ancient dated Christian inscription. It was discovered over the doorway of a house in a Syrian village, and formerly marked the site of a Marcionite meeting-house or church, which curiously enough was called a synagogue. The date is October 1, A.D. 318, and the most remarkable point about it is that the church was dedicated to " The Lord and Saviour Jesus, the Good " — Chrestos not Christos. In early times there seems to have been much con fusion between the two titles. Christos is the Greek for the Hebrew Messiah, Anointed, and was the title used by those who believed that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. This was denied, not only by the Marcionites, but also by many of their Gnostic pre decessors and successors. The title Chrestos was used of one perfected, the holy one, the saint ; no doubt in later days the orthodox, who subsequently had the sole editing of the texts, in pure ignorance changed Chrestos into Christos wherever it occurred ; so that instead of finding the promise of perfection in the religious history of all the nations, they limited it to the Jewish tradition alone, and struck a fatal blow at the universality of history and doctrine.

There was naturally a number of sub-schools of the Marcion school, and in its ranks were a number of distinguished teachers, of whom, however, we have only space to refer to Apelles.

WE owe our most reliable information on this Gnostic to a certain Rhodon, who opposed his views some time in the reign of Commodus (180-193 A.D); an excerpt from this lost " refutation " has fortunately been preserved for us by Eusebius. At this time Apelles was a very old man and refused the con troversy, saying that all sincere believers would ultimately be saved, whatever their theology might be — a most enlightened doctrine and worthy of the best in Gnosticism. As Hort says : " The picture which Rhodon unwittingly furnishes of his [Apelles'] old age is pleasant to look upon. We see a man unwearied in the pursuit of truth, diffident and tolerant, resting in beliefs which he could not reconcile, but studious to maintain the moral character of theology."

Apelles seems to have taken up a less exclusive position than Marcion, though his book of Reasonings, directed against the Mosaic theology, seems to have been drastic enough; and he is further said by Eusebius to have written a " multitude of books " of the same nature. He was, however, specially taken to task for his belief in the clairvoyant faculty of a certain Philumene, whom he came across in his old age. Her visions were recorded in a book called The Manifestations, by which Apelles set great store. Strangely enough, the man who pours on his head the greatest abuse for this, accompanied with the usual charges of immorality, is Tertullian, who, in his own treatise On the Soul, following out his own Montanist convictions, confesses his full belief in the prophetical power of a certain voyante of his own congregation, in a most entertaining and naive fashion ! Rhodon, on the contrary, who knew Apelles personally at Alexandria, says that the old gentleman thought himself protected from such slanderous insinuations, by his age and well-known character.

Philumene seems to have enjoyed certain psychic faculties, and also to have been a " medium " for physical phenomena, as a modern spiritist would say. She belonged to the class of holy women or " virgins," who were numerous enough in the early Church, though it is exceedingly doubtful whether any of them were trained seeresses, except in the most advanced Gnostic circles. There is an entertaining account of Philumene in a curious fragment of an anonymous author, which was printed in the early editions of Augustine's work On Heresies, in the section devoted to the Severians. The following is Hort's rendering of the passage : " He [Apelles] moreover used to say that a certain girl named Philumene was divinely inspired to Her predict future events. He used to refer to her his dreams, and the perturbations of his mind, and to forewarn himself secretly by her divinations or presages." [Here some words appear to be missing.] " The same phantom, he said, showed itself to the same Philumene in the form of a boy. This seeming boy sometimes declared himself to be Christ, some-

times Paul. By questioning this phantom she used to supply the answers which she pronounced to her hearers. He added that she was accustomed to perform some wonders, of which the following was the chief : she used to make a large loaf enter a glass vase with a very small mouth, and to take it out uninjured with the tips of her fingers; and was content with that food alone, as if it had been given her from above." All of which is very monkish and very spiritistic, and quite in keeping with the records of phenomen alism. We should, however, remember that this account is not from the side of the Gnostics, but from an unfriendly source. We shall perhaps never know whether Apelles had a knowledge of the sources of the phenomena he witnessed ; or, like the vast majority of that time, as indeed of all times, ignorantly assumed that the fact of psychic powers proved the truth of theological doctrines.

LET us now return to the early years of the second century, and devote our attention to Basilides and his Basilides and followers (" them of Basilides "), who elaborated one of the most abstruse and consistent systems of the Gnosis, the outlines of which are plainly recoverable from the garbled fragments that Patristic polemics have left us. Of the life of this great doctor of the Gnosis we know nothing beyond the fact that he taught at Alexandria. His date is entirely conjectural ; he is, however, generally supposed to have been immediately prior to Valentinus. If, therefore, we say that he flourished somewhere about A.D. 120-180, it should be understood that a margin of ten years or so either way has to be allowed for. Of his nationality again we know nothing. But whether he was Greek, or Egyptian, or Syrian, he was steeped in Hellenic culture, and learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians. He was also well versed in the Hebrew scriptures as set forth in the Greek version of the Seventy. The Gospel teaching was his delight, and he wrote no fewer than twenty-four books of commentaries thereon, although he does not appear to have used the subsequently canonical versions. He also quotes from several of the Pauline Letters.

Of the writings of Basilides the most important were the commentaries already referred to; they were the first commentaries on the Gospel-teachings written by a Christian philosopher; and in this, as in all other departments of theology, the Gnostics led the way. Basilides is further said to have written a Gospel himself, and to have claimed to be the disciple of a certain Glaucias, who was an " inter preter of Peter." There is also mention of certain Traditions of Matthias, as held in great honour by the school. These purported to be teachings given to Matthias in secret by Jesus after the " resurrec tion." It may, therefore, be supposed that the Gospel of Basilides was not a new historical setting of the Sayings of the Lord, but an exposition of that "knowledge of supermundane things," which was the definition he gave to the Gospel. Basilides presumably wrote a commentary on the Sayings and Doings of the Lord, which were in general circulation in many traditions, with or without the various historical settings; and also his own elabora tion of certain inner instructions that had been handed down by a secret tradition. Whether or not this inner Gospel formed part of the twenty-four books of his Exegetica is doubtful ; most critics, however, are in favour of this view. In any case, it is to be supposed that his commentaries aimed at explaining the public Sayings and Parables by the light of this secret Gospel. But there is another hypothesis, which, if true, would be of intense interest. It is suggested that it was Matthias, one of the heads of the inner schools, who wrote the original sketch of Sayings and Doings underlying our Synoptic accounts, and that these accounts were expansions by various presbyters of the outer churches in Egypt. The original draft was pre-

sumably a Life intended for public circulation, and designed to be capable of an interpretation according to the inner tenets of the Gnosis. Basilides is also said to have written certain Odes, but of these no fragment has reached us. Our main sources of information for recovering an outline of the Basilidian Gnosis are three in Our number, and consist of the very fragmentary quota- Information. tions : (i.) of Hippolytus in his later work, The Philosophumena ; (ii.) of Clement of Alexandria in his Miscellanies; and (iii.) presumably in the first place (either of the lost Syntagma of Justin or) of the lost work of Agrippa Castor, who is said by Eusebius to have written a refutation of the views

of Basilides in the reign of Hadrian (c. 133 A.D.), were copied by Ireneeus, and the epitomators of the earlier, smaller, and now lost work of Hippolytus. Turning to the great work of Hippolytus, we come upon the most valuable information extant for the reconstruction of this most highly metaphysical system. The Church Father had evidently before him a treatise of Basilides, but whether it was the Exegetica or not, is by no means clear ; what is certain, however, is that it set forth the Gospel, or " knowledge of supermundane things," as Basilides understood it ; and we can only regret that we have not the original text of the Gnostic doctor himself before us, instead of a most faulty copy of the text of the Church Father's Refutation, whose method is of the most provoking. Hippolytus muddles up his own glosses and criticisms with mutilated quotations,

imperfectly summarizes important passages, which treat of conceptions requiring the greatest subtlety and nicety of language; and in other respects does scant justice to a thinker whose faith in Christianity was so great, that, far from confining it to the narrow limits of a dogmatic theology, he would have it that the Gospel was also a universal philosophy explanatory of the whole world-drama. Let us then raise our thoughts to those sublime heights to which the genius of Basilides soared so many centuries ago, when faith in the universal possibilities of the Glad Tidings was really living. And first we must rise to that stupendous intuition of Deity, which transcends even Being, and which to the narrow minds of earth seems pure nothing ness, instead of being that which beggars all fullness. Beyond time, beyond space, beyond consciousness, beyond Being itself —

" There was when naught was ; nay, even that The Divinity ' naught ' was not aught of things that are [even Be?n°gd in the world of reality]. But nakedly, conjecture and mental quibbling apart, there was absolutely not even the One [the Logos of the world of reality]. And when I use the term 'was,' I do not mean to say that it was [that is to say, in any state of being]; but merely to give some suggestion of what I wish to indicate, I use the expression ' there was absolutely naught.' For that ' naught ' is not simply the so-called Ineffable ; it is beyond that. For that which is really ineffable is not named Ineffable, but is superior to every name that is used.

"The names [we use] are not sufficient even for the [manifested] universe [which is outside the world of real being], so diversified is it; they fall short," Much less, then, he continues to argue, can we find appropriate names for the beings of the world of reality and their operations; and far more impossible, therefore, is it to give names to That which transcends even reality. Thus we see that Basilides soared beyond even the ideal world of Plato, and ascended to the untranscendable intuition of the Orient — the That which cannot be named, to be worshipped in silence alone. We next come to the inception of the Seed of Universality, in this state beyond being, a Universality discrete stage, so to speak, beyond the unmani- Being, fested or noumenal world even.

Hippolytus summarizes this condition of nonbeing, which transcends all being from the original treatise as follows. " Naught was, neither matter, nor substance, nor voidness of substance, nor simplicity, nor impossibility-of -composition, nor inconceptibility, nor imperceptibility, neither man, nor angel, nor god; in fine, neither anything at all for which man has ever found a name, nor any operation which falls within the range either of his preception or conception. Such, or rather far more removed from the power of man's comprehension, was the state of non-being, when [if we can speak of c when ' in a state beyond time and space] the Deity beyond being, without thinking, or feeling, or determining, or choosing, or being compelled, or desiring, willed to create universality.

" When I use the term ' will,' " writes Basilides, " I do so merely to suggest the idea of an operation transcending all volition, thought, or sensible action. And this universality also was not [our] dimensional and differentiate universe, which subsequently came into existence and was separated [from other universes], but the Seed of all universes." This is evidently the same concept as the Mulaprakriti of Indian philosophy, and the most admirable statement of the dogma of the " creation out of nothing" that has been put forward by any Christian philosopher. " This universal Seed contained everything in itself, potentially, in some such fashion as the grain of mustard seed contains the whole simultaneously in the minutest point — roots, stem, branches, leaves, and the innumerable germs that come from the seeds of the plant, and which in their turn produce still other and other plants in manifold series.

"Thus the Divinity beyond being created universality beyond being from elements beyond being, positing and causing to subsist a single something" — which poverty of language compels us to call a Seed, but which was really the potentiality of potentialities, seeing that it was "containing in itself the entire all-seed-potency of the universe." From such a "Seed," which is everywhere and nowhere, and which treasures in its bosom everything that was or is or is to be, all things must come into manifestation in their " proper natures and cycles " and times, at the will of the Deity beyond all. How this is brought about is by no means clear. Basilides seems to have had some idea of a " supplementary development " (/caTa TT pocrQriKriv au^avojmeva), which, however, is beyond definition ; one thing is clear, that he entirely repudiated every idea of emanation, projection, or pullulation (TrpofioKrf).

" For of what sort of emanation is there need, or of what sort of matter must we make supposition, Ex Nihilo. in order that God should make the universe, like as a spider weaves its web [from itself], or mortal man takes brass or timber or other matter out of which to make something ? But ' He spake and it was,' and this is what is the meaning of the saying of Moses, 'Let there be light, and there was light.' Whence, then, was the light ? From naught. For it is not written whence, but only from the voice of the Speaker of the word. And He who spake the word, was not ; and that which was, was not. For the Seed of the universe, the word that was spoken, c Let there be light,' was from the state beyond being. And this was what was spoken in the Gospel, ' It was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.' Man both deriveth his principles from that Seed and is also enlightened by it." This primordial Light and Life is the source of all things.

The next stage deals with the outcome, firstfruits, highest product, or sublimest consummation, of universal potentiality, which Basilides calls the Sonship. " In the absolute Seed there was a triple The Sonship. Sonship in every way consubstantial with the God beyond being, coming into being from the state beyond being. Of this triply divided Sonship, one aspect was the subtlest of the subtle, one less subtle, and one still stood in need of purificationThe subtlest nature of the Sonship instantly and immediately, together with the depositing of the Seed of universality by the God beyond being, burst forth, rose aloft, and hastened from below upward, ' like wing or thought,' as Homer sings, and was with Him beyond being [TT/OO? rov OVK oVTOL — 'with,' the very same word as the mysterious preposition in the Proem now prefixed to the fourth canonical Gospel]. For every nature striveth after Him because of His transcendency of all beauty and loveliness, but some in one way and others in another.

" The less subtle nature of the Sonship, on the other hand, still remained within the universal Seed ; for though it would imitate the higher and ascend, it could not, seeing that it fell short of the degree of subtlety of the first Sonship, which had ascended through it [the second], and so it remained behind. The less subtle Sonship, accordingly, had to find for itself as it were wings on which to soar, . . . and these wings are the Holy Spirit." Just as a bird cannot fly without wings, and the wings cannot soar without the bird, so the second Sonship and the Holy Spirit are complementary the one to the other, and confer mutual benefits on one another.

We here see that Basilides is dealing with the second aspect of the Logos, the positive-negative state ; we also perceive the anticipation of the ground of the great controversies which subsequently arose generations later, such as the Arian and the " Filioque." But if we enquire whence was the Holy Spirit, Basilides will tell us, from the universal Seed, from which all things came forth under the will of Deity. " The second Sonship, then, borne aloft by the Spirit, as by a wing, bears aloft the wing, that is the The Holy Spirit ; but on drawing nigh to the first Sonship and the God beyond being, who createth from the state beyond being, it could no longer keep the Spirit with it, for it [the Spirit] was not of the same substance with it, nor had it a nature like unto that of the Sonship. But just as a pure and dry atmosphere is unnatural and harmful to fish, so to the Holy Spirit was that state of the Sonship together with the God beyond being — that state more ineffable than every ineffable and transcending every name.

" The Sonship, therefore, left it [the Spirit] behind near that Blessed Space, which can neither be con ceived of, nor characterized by any word, yet not entirely deserted nor yet divorced from the Sonship. But even as the sweetest smelling unguent poured into a vessel, though the vessel be emptied of it with the greatest possible care, nevertheless some scent of the unguent still remains and is left behind — the vessel retains the scent of the unguent, though it no longer holds the unguent itself — in such a way has the Holy Spirit remained emptied and divorced from the Sonship, yet at the same time retaining in itself as it were the power of the unguent, the savour of the Sonship. And this is the saying, ' Like the unguent on the head which ran down unto Aaron's beard '- the savour of the Holy Spirit permeating from above and below even as far as the formlessness [crude matter] and our state of existence, whence the [remaining] Sonship received its first impulse to ascend, borne aloft as it were on the wings of an eagle. For all things hasten from below upward, from worse to better, nor is anything in the better condition so bereft of intelligence as to plunge down ward. But as yet this third Sonship still remains in the great conglomeration of the seed-mixture, confer ring and receiving benefits," in a manner that will receive subsequent explanation.