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Ceraunia of Green Jade, converted into a Gnostic Talisman. (Se3 page 197.)

'(liK£^

THE GNOSTICS

THEIR REMAINS.

ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL.

C. W. KING, M.A.

' Nam veluti pueri trepidant atque omnia caecis In tenebris metuunt, sic nos in luce timemus luterdum nilo quae sunt metuenda magis quam Quaj pueri in tenebris pavitant, finguntque futura.'

SECOND EDITION.

LONDON:

DAVID NUTT, 270, STEAND.

1887.

LONDON :

PRINIHU UV WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,

bTAMFOHD STRRKT AND CHARING CROSS.

[All r/ghfa resen-ed.']

.aV

THE LIBRARY

BRIGHAM YOUNG LNIVERSITV

PROVO, LTAH

PREFACE.

When this work first appeared, three-and-twenty years ago, it became at once an object of unmerited abuse, and of equally unmerited praise. Small divines mistaking it for an insidious attempt to overthrow opinions " as by law established," spurted at it with pens dipped in the milk of the Gospel ; whilst, under the very same hallucination, " Friends of Light " lauded it to the skies — either party equally ignorant both of the subject, and of the purpose of my labours. One noted Zoilus (whose recollections of Homer would seem to be of the same deeply- marked nature as Ensign Blifil's) is disgusted at my citing "Aidoneus" as a title of the God of the Shades; another is astonished at my ignorance in calling Bardanes a Persian, whereas he was a native of Pontus ; not understanding that my argument was equally valid in spite of the mistake — Pontus being originally a province of the empire of Darius, and what is more to the purpose, the actual focus whence Mithraicism diffused itself over the Eoman world.

A still greater cause of outcry against the book was my presuming to lay presumptuous hands upon the Sacred Ark of Masonry, and openly express my opinion that the " Free and Accepted " of these times have no more real connexion with the ancient Craft, out of whose terms and forms, like fig-leaves, they have stitched together aprons, wherewith to cover the real nakedness of their pretension, than the Italian Carbonari of Murat's day had with the trade of charcoal burners, whose baskets were borrowed for the Prebident's throne. King Hiram's skull gnashed his teeth with rage within the cista mystica ; and one valiant yoixng Levite of the court e of Abia,

VI PBEFACE.

proceeds thus logically to confute all my assertions : " Athelstan built a church : he could not build without masons ; argal, Athelstan was the founder of Masonry in England.

But enough of this ; the same treatment is necessarily in store for the present edition ; it must look for

" Verbera, oarnifices, robur, pix, lamiua, taedae."

The one reviewer of its predecessor who exhibited any acquain- tance with the literature of the subject, felt himself (from his position) " in duty bound " to qualify his praise by passing the summary judgment " that I had displayed in the work more of the spirit of a Gnostic than of a Catholic Christian." This sentence, intended for condemnatory, I accept as the highest praise that could be given to my labours — taking yvwo-rtKos in its strict sense of " one addicted to knowledge " ; and who therefore studies the history and remains of any opinion for the sole purpose of understanding the truth ; and not for the sake of demonstrating the Truth can only exist under one defined form.

Let me now proceed to state how, in the present edition, I have endeavoured still further to deserve the appellation attached to me by the good-natured Aristarchus. My Treatise was the only one upon Gnostic Archaeology (for Dr. Walsh's little book scarce deserves the name) that had appeared since Chiflet's admirable " Apistopistus " (1617); — Matter, in his ' Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme (1827), an excellent analysis of the doctrines of the Gnosis, doing nothing for its monuments, beyond republishing, on a reduced scale, the engravings of the " Apistopistus." The only sources of information accessible to me at the time of writing that edition were the same as those drawn upon by Matter before me, namely the treatises of Irenaeus and EjoipJianius. In the interval, I have become acquainted with, and, in order thoroughly to master, have made complete translations of, two recently discovered works that throw much light upon many difficult questions in this investigation. The one is the ' Kefutation of all Heresies,' ascribed either to Origen or Hippolytus ; its author being inti- mately acquainted with the doctrines which he holds up for

PBEFACE. VU

detestation, or for ridicule ; and (what makes his criticisms of far higher value to students of the present day) illustrating them by copious extracts from the then so extensive heretical literature, soon to be completely exterminated by the triumph of the " orthodox " Faith.

The other aid is the " Pistis-Sophia," sole survivor of the once numerous family of Gnostic Gospels ; but fortunately the most important of them all for our purpose, and the very one for whose escape (in its Coptic disguise) the archaeologist ought to feel most grateful to the ignorance of the destroyers. For, whereas the other Gnostic teachers appear (as Hippolytus loves to point out) to build up their systems upon the lines of various Grecian philosophies, the " Pistis-Sophia " makes known to us what were the deepest secrets of the so celebrated Egyptian Mysteries, which are identical with those of the Kabbinical Kabbala, the only alteration being that of putting them into the mouth of Scripture personages, in order to adapt them to the prevailing change of ideas. This book, therefore, from its very nature supplies a kind of elucidation of con- temporary monuments not to be found elsewhere, for the Christian Fathers discuss only the doctrines of their adversaries, not condescending to notice their application to the uses of everyday life. It is the latter point that gives such interest to the " Pistis-Sophia " — we gain from it the whole category of Holy Names, of such talismanic virtue; the powers and titles of the actual genii, the constitution of the soul ; and its state after death. But what is yet more curious, the " Pistis- Sophia " exhibits the leading principles of the Kabbala already established, and applied to the demonstration of the highest truths in exactly the same manner as these principles were used by the heresiarch, Marcus, in the third century. And here it may be remarked parenthetically, that no one really acquainted with the history of religious opinions, can for a moment imagine that Marcus (a born Jew, be it remembered) was the first inventor of the wondrous machinery which he used in the development of his system, and the ' Manifestation of Truth,' — he did but apply to a new purpose the rules that he found already established as authoritative in the Eabbinical

Vlll PREFACE. .

schools. For in Religion there is no " new thing " ; the same ideas are worked up over and over again ; the gold in the sovereign of to-day may first have circulated in the new-coined stater of Croesus.

Last, in point of time, but equally valuable with any of the fresh sources that have served me for the completion of this work, must I gratefully acknowledge the oral teachings of Eabbi Dr. Schiller-Szinessy — that unchanged representative of the Gamaliels of old — at whose feet I have sat for many years, listening to his exposition of the " Holy Zohar." What- ever may be the date of the present form of that transcendental development of the ToraJi — no one but an inverted Jew, totally unread in the Greek historians of the Gnosis, can fail to perceive that its principles and traditions are the very same as those taught in the schools of Babylon and Tiberias at the time when Simon Magus and Justinus studied there.

During the many years that have slipped by since its first publication, I have trom time to time re-cast and re-written the entire Treatise, incorporating with the former contents what- ever fresh information, reading, or chance, might throw in my way. In the same interval, two other works upon this subject have made their appearance. Dean Hansel's ' Gnostics ' is a well-written and accurate summary of all that the Greek Fathers have left us upon the doctrines of the various sects ; but, as the hook is evidently intended for the use of theological students alone, the author has regarded his subject from a strictly pro- fessional point of view ; totally ignoring the archaeological side of the question (with which I am chiefly concerned), as being- altogether foreign to the j)urpose for which he wrote.

On the other hand, Dr. Ginsburg's ' The Kabbala : its Doctrines, Development, and Literature,' possesses not only the merit of a lucid exposition of the most abstruse of all TTieo- sophies, as contemplated in the shape to which it has been brought by the refining subtlety of successive generations of Bahhins — but will be found an invaluable guide to all who attempt the interpretation of talismanic inscriptions. For example, the Hebrew radicals, which express the Names of the SepMroth, are to be discoveied in the strings of Greek

PREFACE. IX

consonants, now dumb for want of vowels, which have hitherto baffled the ingenuity of every reader.

There seems reason for suspecting that the Sibyl of Esoteric Buddhism drew the first notions of her new religion from the analysis of the Inner Man, as set forth in my first edition. I may therefore promise to myself the gratitude of those "clear spirits " (the Miltonian phrase) who are busying themselves " by searching to find out God," for now making known to them a still more profound theosophy, whose revelations definitely settle hardest problems relating to our mental nature, and the world beyond the grave. Investigators of the same order as the Esoteric Buddhists will find here a Gospel ready made to their hand — so full of great truths, so original in its conceptions, that it would seem to flow from no human source ; and must carry conviction of its divine origin to every mind that shall be adapted by its nature for the reception of the good seed.

In conclusion, I must express my grateful acknowledgments of the services of my indefatigable friend, Mr. S. S. Lewis, Fellow of Corpus Christi College; but for whose persuasion, and negotiations with the publishers, these pages would never have seen the light. Not merely this, but he has enabled me to overcome an apparently insurmountable difficulty in the way of the publication — the failure of my sight, which totally prevented my conducting the work through the press — by taking upon himself the correction of the proofs : a laborious and irksome task to any one besides the author ; and demanding a saciifice of time that can only be appreciated by those, who, like myself, know the multifarious nature of the engagements by which every hour of his life is so completely absorbed.

Mr. Joseph Jacobs has furnished a carefully compiled list of authors quoted in this work, and of the references made to them, which will be found of use to those who wish to pursue the subject still further.

C. W. KING.

Trinity College, Cambridge, ' Awjust 26, 1887.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

Preface .......... v

Introduction .......... xiii

PART I.

Gnosticism and its Sources.

Introduction — Gnosticism and its origin— Pistis-Sophia — Book of Enoch — Gnosticism in its bsgiuniug — Influence of Judaism on the Ancients — The Zendavesta — The Kabbala and the Tal- mud— Indian Sources of Gnosticism, Manes — -Buddhism — Simon- ianism — Basilides — The Ophites — Machinery of the Gnosis . 1

PART II.

The Worship of Mithras and Serapis.

Origin of Mithraicism — The Mithraic Sacraments — A Roman Mithas in his Cave — Mithraic Talismans — ^Gnostic Sacraments and Initiations, as Connected with the Mithraic — -St. Augustine on Gnosticism— The Worship of Serapis — The Figured Representa- tions of Serapis — Probable Origin of Serapis — Monuments of the Serapis- worship — The Caduceus and its Symbolism — Death, as Represented in Ancient Art — Tomb-treasures — Gnostic con- nection with Superstitious Practices, the Evil Eye — Ceraunia of Jade converted into a Gnostic Talisman .... 113

PART III. Abraxas, Arraxaster and Abraxoid Gems.

Agathodaemon Worship — The Chnuphis Serpent — The Abraxas — Abraxaster, or Borrowed Types — Abraxoids, or Gems con- founded with the true Gnostic — -The True Abraxas Gems — The god Abraxas, as described by the Christian Fathers — " Abraxas," Etymology of — " Abraxas," its numerical Value — The Abraxas Religion — The Ineffable name in its Hindoo Form — Abraxas-gerns, their Materials, Workmanship, and Nature — Legends and Formula^. . . . . . .213

Xll

CONTENTS.

PAllT IV. The Figuhed Monuments of Gnosticism.

PAGE

Gnostic Siylx, Symbols, Legends Explained — The Name lAO — Abraxas, a New Type of — Original Purpose of these Formulaj — The Gnostic Theogony — The Schema of the Ophites — The Cause of Sin — State after death of the Uninitiated — Future Punishments, and the Infernal Hierarchy — Talismanic Leaden Scrolls — Leaden Books — Numerals, Their Virtues — Magic Squares 303

^fi-x.

PAET V.

Templars, Kosickucians, Freemasons.

Preservation of Gnostic Symbols among the Freemasons— Masonic Pretences — "Constitutiones Artis Geometriae " — Henry VI. and his Masons — Hindoo and Chinese Symbols — Masons' Marks — Stonehenge — The Carbonari — De Quincey — The Eosi/ Cross — " Vultus Triformis " — Hosea Lux — Lodges First Estabhshed — Templars Suppressed — "Mystery of Baphomet Eevealed" — Articles of Accusation against the Templars — Orphic Mysteries • — Clarkson on the Temple Church — " Baj^hometic Vases " — Manicheism in France — The Assassins of the Lebanon — The Druses — The Sufi of Persia — Lodges first Established — Spartacus Weishaupt — Wren — "Scottish Kniglits"- — Cypher Writing — • " Book of Kells" — Brand-marking, A'ational and Mystic .

373

Desceiption of Woodcuts ....

Description of Plates .....

Bibliographical Appendix, by JosejA Jacobs, B.A. Index ........

Plates A to 0.

432

435 449 457

INTEODUCTION.

That nothing upon the subject of Gnosticism should have hitherto been attempted in our language except by Dr. Walsh in his very meagre sketch (long since out of print), seemed to me a sufficient excuse for my undertaking the same task upon a more comprehensive scale, as well as upon different principles. Dr. Walsh's performance, entitled ' An Essay on Coins, Medals, and Gems, as illustrating the progress of Christianity in the Early Ages,' is little more than an abridgment of some popular Church History for the period comprehended within its scope, illustrated from the very scanty store of monuments at his command ; whilst his explanations are, like the source supply- ing them, based upon grounds altogether fallacious, and, even to the beginner, obviously unsatisfactory.

Taking for granted, upon the bare word of their opponents, that the various Teachers of the Gnosis were mere heretics, that is, perverters of the regular (!) Christian doctrine which they had at first embraced as a divine revelation, he, like his guides, did not trouble himself any further to investigate the true origin of their systems, but was content with roughly sketching their most prominent features; whilst in explaining their extant pro- ductions, he refers all, however diverse in nature, to the same school, and interprets them according to his own preconceived and baseless views of their character.

On such a plan as this, neither the doctrines nor the monu- ments they have bequeathed to us in such profusion are susceptible of even a plausible explanation, much less of one capable of satisfying an unprejudiced and inquiring mind. The method, therefore, of treating the subject which I have followed in the present work is to begin by reviewing the great religious systems of the East, flourishing at the time of the promulgation

vi'

XIV INTRODUCTION.

of Christianity in those regions, with the influence of these systems upon the modes of thought and expression of both the missionaries of the new creed and their opponents ; and lastly to establish, upon the testimony of the Apostle to the Gentiles himself, the previous existence of the germs of Gnosticism in the cities that were the scene of his most important labours.

In my sketch of these older systems I have done little more than condense Matter's admirable introduction to his ' Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme ' ; but from that point forward have carried on my investigations according to a theory to which that writer once alludes approvingly, although, from some un- accountable reason, he has neglected to follow it out to its legitimate consequences. Eestricting himself to describing in his Incid and elegant style the speculations of the several heresi- archs, and seeking no further back than the Zendavesta and Kabbala for the storehouses whence they all must have drawn their first principles, he falls into the grave error of represent- ing their doctrines as novel, and the pure inventions of the persons that preached them.

That the seeds of the Gnosis were originally oi Indian growth, carried so far westward by the influence of that Buddhistic movement which had previously overspread all the East, from Thibet to Ceylon, was the great truth faintly discerned by Matter, but which became evident to me upon acquiring even a slight acquaintance with the chief doctrines of Indian theosophy. To display this in the most incontrovertible manner, the two systems, each in its highest form of development — that of Yalentinus, and that of the Nepalese Buddhists — are described and confronted for the sake of establishing their original identity: and throughout these pages innumerable other points of affinity will be found noticed as they present themselves. Actual historical proof of the same fact will also be adduced, establishing the important circumstance (but hitherto entirely unnoticed, or disregarded) that Buddhism had already been planted in the dominions of the Seleucidai and the Ptolemies at least as early as the times of the generation following the establishment of those dynasties, and was provided for in treaties made between those Grecian piinces and the great

INTKODUCTION. XV

Hindoo promoter of the religion. In the history of the Church it is most certain that almost every notion that was subsequently denounced as Jieretical can be traced up to Indian speculative philosophy as its genuine fountain-head : how much that was allowed to pass current for orthodox had really flowed from the same source, it is neither expedient nor decorous now to inquire.

In order to obtain a clear view of the principal forms of Gnosticism, as well as to escape relying upon second-hand information (in this case more than elsewhere untrustworthy), j commenced the collecting materials for the present work by carefully perusing the vast ' Panarion ' of Epiphanius — a laborious undertaking, but well repaid by the vivid picture he presents of the inner state of society under the Lower Empire, and of the war even at that late period so fiercely waged between Eeason and Faith. The ' Panarion ' is a connected history of the Gnosis in all its developments during the first three centuries — the author quoting Irenseus for the earlier ages ; for the later his account is of the highest value, having been derived from personal experience, Epiphanius having in his youth belonged to the Marcosian sect. After his days nothing new sprung up in the field of Eeligious philosophy, before so diversified with the vigorous and more curious flowers (or weeds) of the Gnosis ; the civil now combining with the ecclesiastical power to cut down and root out all such daring and irregular growths of the human mind.

Since the first publication of this treatise I have become acquainted with and minutely studied two authorities of the greatest importance for the true understanding of Gnosticism — tlie one for its philosophy ; the other for its tangible remains. ' The Eefutation of all Heresies,' of Hippolytus, written two centuries before the ' Panarion,' gives a view of the chief schools of the Gnosis, drawn up with the utmost intelligence united with the most charming candour ; qualities sadly to seek in the other ecclesiastical historians. The ' Pistis-Sophia,' the only Gnostic Gospel preserved, throws a light upon the terminology and machinery of the religion that, before its discovery and publication was perfectly unattainable. Both

XVI INTRODUCTION.

these treatises are of recent discovery, and consequently their assistance was lost to the previous historians of Gnosticism. I have therefore availed myself largely of these invaluable resources, which will be found doing good service in almost every section of the present work.

After considering the class of speculations that owed their hirth to India, next in importance for her contributions to the opinions, still more to the monuments before us, comes Egypt with her primeval creed, although exhibited in its Eomanized and latest phase ; and whose productions are too often confounded with the true offspring of the Gnosis. These remains are here discriminated ; their distinctive characters are pointed out ; and they are arranged under several heads, according as their object was religious or medicinal. In the consideration of these remains, Bellermann's classification has been chiefly followed ; according to which the truly Gnostic are regarded as those only that exhibit the figure of the Pantheus, Abraxas, the actual invention of Basilides, and which gives its name to the class. The second, Abraxoids, includes the types borrowed from different religions by the other Gnostic teachers. The third, Abraxaster, consists of such as in their nature are purely astrological, and intended for talismans; deriving their virtues from the stars. In the first of these classes much space has been devoted to the ingenious creation of the Alexandrine philosopher, the pantheistic image of the supreme Abraxas ; whose title has hitherto been improperly applied to monuments some of which are anterior in date to his embodiment in a visible form ; whilst others spring from nations entirely unconnected with his worship. Of this eidolon of the personage thereby typified, of the meaning of his name and titles, much information has been collected, and presented here in a connected form for the benefit of those interested in learning what can on safe grounds be established in elucidation of these abtruse questions.

Mithraicism, under whose kindly and congenial shelter so much of Occidental Christianity grew up unmolested, is reviewed in its due order, and the causes explained of an alliance at first sight so inexplicable. With this subject are connected the singular resemblance between the ceremonial of the two, and the transfer

INTRODUCTION. XVll

of 80 much that was Mithraic into the practice of the orthodox ; and many curions memorials will be found described bearing witness to the reality of this adaptation.

After the Mithraic, the religion of Serapis comes to be considered ; a worship which, besides being the last of the Heathen forms to fall before the power of Christianity, had previously contributed, as largely as the Mithraic, to the con- stitution of the later Gnosticism. It is in truth a great mis- take, the confining the name of " Gnostic "(as is commonly done) to the sectaries who, boasting of their " superior lights," declared that they were the only real Christians (as did the Ophites), and that too in virtue of a creed professedly of their own devising. Such Gnostics indeed were Christians by their own showing, and regarded all who differed from them as heretics : but at the same time they based their arguments upon the tenets of Pagan religions; very far from regarding the latter as the empty fabrications of demons, which was the persuasion of the ortho- dox. But although they accepted these ancient Ethnic legends, it was only because through the help of their " knowledge " they were enabled to discern the truth enveloped within these seemingly profane traditions. But the followers of Mithras and of Serapis had in reality, and long before them, a Gnosis of their own, communicated in their Mysteries to the initiated few ; and they opposed to the predictions of orthodox and Gnostic alike claims and pretensions lofty as their own. The Emperor Hadrian, a most diligent inquirer into things above man's nature, got himself initiated into one mystery after another ; nevertheless we shall find him writing from Alexandria that the worship of Christ and of Serapis was in that city one and the same, and moreover the sole religion of that immense population. Consequently, those initiated into the true secrets of the old religion must have recognised the fact that their deity, whether the Sun or the Soul of the Universe, was nothing but a type of the One, the Saviour recently revealed to them : or else it would appear (which tells equally for our argument) that the new converts, in order to escape persecution, enjoyed their own faith under the covert of the national worship, which was susceptible of a spiritual interpretation quite cognate to their own ideas,

b

XVm INTEODUCTION,

and indeed enshrouding the same. As for the worshippers of Mithras, their whole elaborate system of sacraments and degrees of initiation had no other object than the securing of spiritual enlightenment and spiritual blessings. The foundation being the pure teaching of Zoroaster, its holders were prepared gladly to accept any higher revelation, and to discover that the gi^eater mystery had been foreshadowed in the types and ceremonies of the former one. In this way a man might continue a Mithraicist and yet accept all the doctrines of Christianity, as the priests of that religion in their last days assured the incredulous Augustine.

After thus pointing out the various elements which the Apostles of the Gnosis worked up so ingeniously into one harmonious whole, incorporating therewith so much of the Christian scheme as fitted to the rest, we come prepared to the examination of the Symbols and Terminology by which these ideas were communicated to the members of the sect who had attained to the Arcanum; the composite images or sigils " having a voice for the intelligent, which the vulgar crowd heareth not."

Astrology justly claims for her own a large share of the relics popularly called Gnostic; for Gnosticism, from the beginning, had linked its own speculations to those of the Magians' national science, and borrowed as a vehicle for its own peculiar ideas the machinery of the latter — its Astral Genii, Decani, and Myriageneses. And this truth was seen by the earliest writers upon Gnosticism, for Hippolytus proves conclusively, at much length, that the system of the Peratae (a branch of the Ophites) was nothing more than a barefaced plagiarism from the rules of Astrology. Under this head I have endeavoured to separate the purely Astrological talismans from those to which the illuminati, their makers, had given a more spiritual sense. "Astrology, not Christ, is the author of their religion," says Hippolytus of the sects founded by Euphrates and Celbes ; and proceeds to give extracts from their writings, held in the highest esteem at the time, which amply bear out his assertion.

Next pour in, a multitudinous swarm, the stones covered over with long strings of bare inscriptions, genuine offspring of the Kabbala, that betray the handiwork of the idol-hating Jewish

INTRODUCTION. XIX

dreamers of Alexandria — spells even then ascribed to Solomon, and which secured the favour

" Of those demons that are found In fire, air, flood, or under ground; Whose power hath a true consent With planet or with element." ■

One ohject I have kept steadily in view throughout the whole of this investigation — to show how the productions of the different schools are to be distinguished from each other ; and to this particular attention has been given in describing the numerous remains proceeding from the several sources just enumerated, that are collected in the accompanying plates, and thus in some degree to remedy the confusion that reigns at present in the whole department. My predecessor, Matter, busied himself only with the doctrines, making use of the monuments merely in illustration of his remarks ; but as my own labours are properly designed to be subsidiary to his invaluable treatise, I refer the reader to him for the more complete elucidation of the philosophy of Gnosticism, and give my full attention to its archaeological side, which he has too cursorily glanced at, and for which nothing has been done of any importance since the publications of Chiflet and Montfaucon.

Last to be considered comes the Gnosis in its final and grandest manifestation, the composite religion of Manes : with its wonderful revival and diffusion over Mediaeval Europe ; and its supposed connexion with the downfall of the Templars, of which catastrophe the history and causes are here briefly sketched ; although to form a satisfactory judgment on the merits of the case is about the hardest problem history can offer. With their scandal and their fate is coupled the most singular phe- nomenon of modern times — the preservation by their professed descendants, the Freemasons, of so much symbolism that appears to be indisputably Gnostic in its origin. For this, however (unfortunately for the lovers of mystery), a very matter of fact but doubtless sufficient cause can be assigned, and by valid arguments established : when the solution of the enigma irresistibly brings to mind ^Esop's apologue of the " Fox and the Mask," and his exclamation of disappointment after he had at

XX INTRODUCTION.

last mustered up sufficient courage to examine the interior of the awe-inspiring and venerable head. This section is illustrated hy all the information I have been able to glean from different sources upon the curious subject of Masons' Marks — which, yet existing and in common use amongst our own craftsmen and equally so amongst the Hindoos in daily religious observance, can be traced back through Gothic retention, and Gnostic usage, through old Greek and Etruscan art, to their tiltimate source ; and which attest more convincingly than any- thing else what region gave birth to the theosophy making such liberal use of the same siglae in Eoman times. To assist inquirers into this point I have been careful to give references to all the published lists of these Marks that have come to my knowledge ; which same rule I have observed as regards other monographs upon the several various questions discussed in the following pages. In this way the shortcomings of myself can be supplied by those desirous of fuller information : for I am well aware that my own best qualification for attempting an arduous investigation like the present, extending over so many and un- connected branches of learning, lies in a larger practical ex- perience of the monuments themselves, tangible and literary, than was possessed by those who have hitherto attempted it. And as it is a most true adage, " Dans le pays des aveugles le borgne est roi," there is some probability of my labours proving both novel and interesting to many, who desire to know something authentic upon the much-talked-of but little under- stood subject of Gnosticism.

. Eelated to this religion by their nature are talismans and amulets in general ; for Gnostic symbols and Gnostic formula gave their virtue to many of the class : being borrowed either directly from the Gnosis, or from the older creeds out of which the latter was constructed. Their employment, and the notions generating them, have been here described ; showing the deriva- tion of many of the mediaeval examples from the Gnostic class ; and by following out the same principle it has been attempted to find a key to their cabalistic legends, which may fit them better than any hitherto offered by their interpreters — symbols and emblems being with them those conveying the idea of death,

INTRODUCTION. XXI

which last indeed has of all others furnished the richest store of such imagery; for thereby the human mind endeavoured to familiarise itself with the thought of mortality, and by em- bellishing the idea tried to reconcile itself to the inevitable. Ihis being a topic of universal interest, to say nothing of its very important relations to Art, my collections connected .therewith have been somewhat extensive, and embrace many particulars neglected by Lessing in his curious essay entitled ' Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet.'

With respect to the illustrations of this book, many doubtless will be surprised as well as disappointed at finding them derived entirely from monuments of such small apparent im- portance as engraved stones ; and, thinking this part incomplete on that account, may accuse the author of negligence in not having had recourse to other evidences of a more public character. But the limitation is in truth the necessary result of the nature of the things discussed in this inquiry. Secret Societies, especially the one whose maxim was (as Clemens records) that truly wise one —

" Learn to know all, but keep thyself unknown ; "

erect no monuments to attract public attention. They deal but in symbols, to be privately circulated amongst their members in passivords known only to the illuminati ; or else they embody their doctrines in mystic drawings, like the Ophite " Dia- gramma " ; or upon papyri long since committed to the flames. The man of taste, but not an antiquary, will certainly exclaim against the rudeness of the drawing in my illustrations ; but the truth is that, rude as they look, they in most cases flatter their originals, the extreme barbarism of which it was often found impossible to reproduce with any hope of leaving the meaning recognisable. Be it remembered that

" Gratia non habitat, non hoc Cyllenius antro."

Pallas no longer, as in the earlier ages of the art, gtiided the engraver's band, but Siva and Bhavani (ill-disguised as Hermes and Ibis) suggested the designs ; or else he was inspired by the Typhonian monsters which imagined the Genii of Astrology. The religion of Fear, under its various manifestations, now

XXll INTRODUCTION.

reigned supreme, having banished the beauteous sensuous machinery of the old Greek Nature-worship, into which nothing that was malignant or hideous was ever suffered to intrude. The virtue of the talisman lay in the type it cariied ; and in its own material substance the manner of the exhibition of the potent sigil was altogether unregarded. One of the most learned men this University has ever produced once re- marked to me that the Gnostic theories reminded him of the visions that float through the brain of a madman — not of a fool. Circumstances following gave a melancholy force to this acute and accurate distinction. Let any imaginative person read my extracts from the " Eevelation " of Marcus, with all its crazy ingenuity in deducing the nature of the Deity from the pro- perties of numerals ; above all, his exemplification of Infinity by the perpetual multiplication of the letters contained in other letters making up a name — he will speedily find his brain begin to whirl, and be reminded of similar phantoms of numerals recurring in endless series, and the equally endless attempts to sum them up in order to obtain repose, that fill the head when suffering from the first approaches of fever before actual delirium pushes memory from her seat. Or, again, when the febrile disturbance of the brain is yet slighter, one will sometimes awake out of a dream with a fleeting sensation of inexpressible happiness arising from the immediate attainment of Omniscience in virtue of something that has just been revealed to him ; but too soon he finds that inefiable something has fled for ever, all that is left of it being the faint recollection that it was contained in a numeral. And one of the most btriking points in the revelation of the ' Seherin von Prevorst,' so religiously recorded by Justinus Kerner (and which proves that all the wondrous narrative was not imposture), is her declaration that she could see the entire history of each year as it closed, with every event, however trifling, clear and distinct before her mind, all comprehended within the fijrm of a single numeral; and her assertion upon these grounds that at the Judgment-Day the whole past life of every man will thus be pictured in a single moment before his mind's eye.

About half the number of the drawings for these illustra-

INTRODUCTION. XXlll

tions were done by mj'self from the most interesting specimens that came under my notice in the course of several years, so that I am ahle to vouch for their scrupulous fidelity. After- wards, when the sudden failure of my sight prevented my carrying on the drawings, the kindness of the then owner of most of the originals came to my assistance and furnished the remainder. Most of them in fact were taken from the large and unpublished set contained in the ancient Praun Cabinet (formed three centuries ago), now unfortunately broken up. The Gnostic stones, however — 73 in number — have been since that time purchased for the British Museum, where they will be found conveniently arranged for consultation, in the Egyptian Room, which contains the works in terra-cotta. This my collection of drawings was in truth the occasion of the present work; for after making out a detailed description of each specimen, it became easy to put the mass of materials I had collected for their elucidation into a form available for support- ing my explanations by showing the grounds on which they were based : and in this way the work has grown up by gradual accretion to its present dimensions. The theme offers so bound- less a variety of interesting subjects for research, one suggesting another in endless succession, that it can only be compared to Marcus' own exposition of the infinite composition of the In- effable Name (quoted above), and would alone supply materials for a whole library of distinct treatises upon its various sub- divisions.

In those few instances where the better style of the original deserved reproduction by a more artistic hand, I have had recourse to the services of Mr. E. B, Utting, who has executed the woodcuts with a spirit as well as an accuracy that leave nothing to be desired.

PART I.

GNOSTICISM AND ITS SOURCES.

TovTov [le x^P"* TTffJi'^ov, Uartp, (TCJ)payi8as ex^cov KaTa^rjcroixai, Alavas oXovs SioSevcrco, fivcTTTjpia iravra diavoL^co, IJ,op(f)as 8e 6ea)v eViSet^o), Koi ra KeKpvjj.p,eva r^s ayias 68ov, FNGSIN Kokeaas, TrapaBaxrco.

Ophite Hymn, (Hippolytus, v. 10.)

" Non e puleggio da piccola barca

Quel clie fendendo va I'ardita prora, Ne da nocchier cli'a se medesmo parca."

(Dante, Farad, xxiii. 68.)

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

GNOSTICISM AND ITS ORIGIN.

The general name "Gnostics" is used to designate several widely differing sects, which sprang up in the Eastern provinces of the Eoman Empire almost simultaneously with the first planting of Christianity. That is to say, these sects then for the first time assumed a definite form, and ranged themselves under different teachers, by whose names they became known to the world, although in all probability their main doctrines had made their appearance previously in many of the cities of Asia Minor. There, it is probable, these sectaries first came into definite existence under the title of " Mystae," upon the estab- lishment of a direct intercourse with India and her Buddhist philosophers, under the Seleucidae and the Ptolemies.

The term " Gnosticism " is derived from the Greek, Gnosis, knowledge — a word specially employed from the first dawn of religious inquiry to designate the science of things divine. Thus Pythagoras, according to Diogenes Laertius, called the transcendental portion of his philosophy, Tvojo-ts tmv ovtwv, " the knowledge of things that are." And in later times Gnosis was the name given to what Porphyry calls the Antique or Oriental philosophy, to distinguish it from the Grecian systems. But the term was first used (as Matter on good grounds conjectures) in its ultimate sense of supernal and celestial knowledge, by the Jewish philosophers belonging to the celebrated school of that nation, flourishing at Alexandria. These teachers, following the example of a noted Eabbi, Aristobulus, surnamed the Peripatician, endeavoured to make out that all the wisdom of the Greeks was derived immediately from the Hebrew

B 2

4 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

Scripture; and by means of their well-known mode of alle- gorical interpretation, which enabled them to elicit any sense desiied out of any given passage of the Old Testament, they sought, and often succeeded, in establishing their theory. In this way they showed that Plato, during his sojourn in Egypt, had been their own scholar; and still further to support these pretensions, the indefatigable Aristobulus produced a string of poems in the names of Linus, Orpheus, Homer, and Hesiod — all strongly impregnated with the spirit of Judaism. But liis Judaism was a very different thing from the simplicity of the Pentateuch. A single, but very chai acteristic, production, of this Jewish Gnosis has come down to our times. This is the " Book of Enoch " (v. p. 18), of which the main object is to mahe known the description of the heavenly bodies and the true names of the same, as revealed to the Patriarch by he angel Uriel. This profession betrays, of itself, the Magian source whence its inspiration was derived. Many Jews, nevertheless, accepted it as a divine revelation ; even the Apostle Jude scruples not to quote it as of genuine Scriptural authority. The " Pistis- Sophia," attributed to the Alexandrian heresiarch Valentinus (so important a guide in the following inquiry), perpetually refers to it as: The highest source of knowledge, as being dictated by Christ Himself, " speaking out of the Tree of Life unto I EOT, the Primal Man." Another Jewish-Gnostic Scripture of even greater interest (inasmuch as it is the " Bible " of the only professed Gnostic sect that has maintained its existence to the present day, the Mandaites of Bassora) is their text- book, the "Book of Adam." Its doctrines and singular application of Zoroastrism to Jewish tenets, present frequent analogies to those of the Pistis-Sophia, in its continual reference to the ideas of the " Religion of Light," of which full particulars will be given when the latter remarkable work comes to be considered (see p. 14). "Gnosticism," therefore, cannot receive a better definition than in that dictum of the sect first and specially calling itself "Gnostics," the Naaseni (translated by the Greeks into " Ophites "), viz., " the beginning of perfection is the knowledge of man, but absolute perfection is the know- kdse of God." And to sive a aeneral view of the nature of

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. O

the entire system, nothing that I can do will serve so well as to transcribe the exact words of a learned and very acute writer upon the subject of Gnosticism (" Christian Eemembrancer," for 1866).

"Starting, then, from this point, we ask what Gnosticism is, and what it professes to teach. What is the peculiar Gnosis that it claims to itself ? The answer is, tlie knowledge of God and of Man, of the Being and Providence of the former, and of the creation and destiny of the latter. While the ignorant and superstitious were degrading the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made with hands, and were changing ' the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator,' the ancient Gnostics held purer and t.ruer ideas. And when these corrupted and idolatrous forms of religion and worship became established, and were popularly regarded as true and real in themselves, the ' Gnostics ' held and secretly taught an esoteric theology of which the popular creed of multitudes of deities, with its whole ritual of sacrifice and worship, was but the exoteric form. Hence all the mysteries which almost, if not all, the heathen religions possessed. Those initiated into these mysteries, whilst they carefully maintained and encouraged the gorgeous worship, sacrifices and processions of the national religion, and even openly taught polytheism and the efficacy of the public rites, yet secretly held something very different — at the first, probably, a purer creed, but in course of time, like the exoteric form, degenerating. The progress of declination differed according to race or habit of thought : in the East it tended to superstition, in the West (as we learn from the writings of Cicero) to pure atheism, a denial of Providence. This system was adopted likewise by the Jews, but with this great difference, that it was superinduced upon and applied to a pre-existent religion ; whereas iu the other Oriental religions, the external was added to the esoteric, and developed out of it. In the Oriental systems the external was the sensuous expression of a hidden meaning ; in the Jewish, the hidden meaning was drawn out of pre-existing external laws and ritual ; in the former the esoteric alone was claimed as divine, in the latter it was the exoteric which was a matter

b THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

of revelation. To repair this seeming defect, the Kabbalists, or teachers of the ' Hidden Doctrine,' invented the existence of a secret tradition, orally handed down from the time of Moses. We may, of course, reject this assertion, and af&rra that the Jews learnt the idea of a Hidden Wisdom, underlying the Mosaic Law, from their intercourse with the Eastern nations during the Babylonian captivity ; and we may further be assured that the origin of this Secret Wisdom is Indian. Peihaps we shall be more exact if we say that the Jews learnt from their inter- course with Eastern nations to investigate the external Divine Law, for the purpose of discovering its hidden meaning. The heathen Gnostics, in fact, collected a Gnosis from every quarter, accepted all religious systems as partly true, and extracted from each what harmonized with their ideas. The Gospel, widely preached, accompanied by miracles, having new doctrines and enunciating new truths, very naturally attracted their attention. The Kabbalists, or Jewish Gnostics, like Simon Magus, found a large portion of apostolic teaching in accordance with their own, and easily grafted upon it so much as they liked. Again the Divine power of working miracles possessed by the Apostles and their successors naturally attracted the interest of those whose chief mj^stery was the practice of magic. Simon the Magician was considered by the Samaritans to be ' the great Power of God ; ' he was attracted by the miracles wrought by the Apostles ; and no doubt he sincerely ' believed,' that is, after his own fashion. His notion of Holy Baptism was probably an initiation into a new mystery with a higher Gnosis than he possessed before, and by which he hoped to be endued with higher powers ; and so likewise many of those who were called Gnostic Heretics by the Christian Fathers were not Christians at all, only they adopted so much of the Christian doctrine as accorded with their system."

The consideration of the local and political circumstances of the grand foci of Gnosticism will serve to explain much that is puzzling in the origin and nature of the system itself. Ephesus was, after Alexandria, the most important meeting-point of Grecian culture and Oriental speculation. In regard to

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR KEMAINS. 7

commerce and riches, although she yielded to the Egyptian capital, yet she rivalled Corinth in both, which city in truth she far surpassed in her treasures of religion and science. Her richness in theosophic ideas and rites had from time immemorial been manifested in her possession of Diana, " whom all Asia and the world " worshipped — that pantheistic figure so con- formable to the genius of the furthest East; her College of " Essenes " dedicated to the service of that goddess ; and her " Megabyzae," whose name sufficiently declares their Magian institution. Hence, also, was supplied the talisman of highest repute in the antique world, the far-famed " Ephesian spell," those mystic words graven upon the zone and feet of the " image that fell down from Jupiter ; " and how zealously magic was cultivated by her citizens is apparent from St. Luke's incidental notice of the cost of the books belonging to those that xised "curious arts " (ja TrepUpya, the regular name for sorcery and divination), destroyed by their owuers in the first transports of conversion to a new faith. Such converts, indeed, after their early zeal had cooled down, were not likely to resist the allurements of the endeavour to reconcile their ancient, far-famed wisdom with the new revelation ; in short, to follow the plan invented not long before by the Alexandrian Jew, in his reconciliation of Plato with Moses and the Prophets. " In Ephesus," says Matter, "the speculations of the Jewish-Egyptian school, and the Semi-Persian speculations of the Kabbala, had then recently come to swell the vast conflux of Grecian and Asiatic doctrines ; so there is no wonder that teachers should have sprung up there, who strove to combine the religion newly preached by the Apostle with the ideas so long estab- lished in the place. As early as the year a.d, 58, St. Paul, in his Eirst Epistle to Timothy, enjoins him to warn certain persons to abstain from teaching ' strange doctrines,' those myths and interminable genealogies that only breed division. These same ' myths and genealogies ' apply, without any doubt, to the theory of the Emanation of the jEons-Sephiroth, and to all the relations between the Good and Bad Angels that the Kabbalists had borrowed from the religion of Zoroaster."

Again, after condemning certain doctrines concerning the

8 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

obligation to complete asceticism, adopted literally from the Essenes, the Apostle adds, " Keep safe the precious charge entrusted to thee, avoiding profane novelties and the antitheses of the knowledge, falsely so-called, of which some making pro- fession have gone astray from the faith of Christ." It was assuredly not the mere fables by which the new converts Bought to enrich and complete the Christian doctrine (such as we still have samples of in the childish, though pious fictions of the Apocryphal Gospels), such things as these were certainly not the " false knowledge," which set itself up against the " true knowledge," that is, Kevelation itself, as something superior to that Kevelation. It must, on the contrary, have been a doctrine professing to make a science out of the Christian faith, and that, too, a science founding its principles upon antitheses. Now what are these " antitheses " (or oppositions) but the teaching of the Zendavesta, concerning the two Empires of Light and Darkness; the two grand classes of Intelligences, the good and the evil spirits, and the perpetual combat going on between them ? Now these antitheses, or the principle of Dualism, is that which forms the most conspicuous feature of the Gnostic scheme ; and in the Apostle's words we trace one of the most obvious ways in which such doctrines were communicated, and how they insinuated themselves into the infant Church.

In fact, the ancient commentators, Theodoret and Chrysostom, who were thoroughly conversant with the Gnosticism of their own day, apply this passage of St. Paul to that actual pre- cursor of Gnosticism, his indefatigable rival Simon Magus himself, whose curious tenets had by that time been widely diffused throughout Asia Minor.

So deeply rooted were such speculations in the minds of many of the Ephesians, that the Apostle, in his Second Epistle to Timothy, written six years later, returns perpetually to the subject, whilst in his Epistle to the Church at Ephesus he entreats his flock not to be seduced by " vain discourses," or " new-coined appellations " (as one reading has it, and which applies forcibly to the Gnostic nomenclature), nor by human doctrines that have no more solidity in themselves than the

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 9

wind, whereof no one knows whence it cometh, or whither it goeth. Nay more, [he even employs the very terminology of Gnosticism, as when he says, " Ye were dead in error and in sins : ye walked according to the ^on of this world, according to the Archon who has the dominion of the air," that is, the Demiurgus Ildabaoth. Here we have the Devs of Zoroaster, whose hosts fill the air, deceive mankind, hlind their under- standings, and lead them into temptation. Again when he adds, " We war not against flesh and blood, but against the Dominions, the Powers, the Lords of the Darkness, the malevolence of the Spirits in the upper regions " — all these are regular Gnostic epithets, having also their place in the Kabbalistic theolog^^ The later Gnosticism is, in fact, as Chiflet has well expressed it, f the spirit of Asiatic antiquity seeking to assert its empire over the soul of Man by insinuating itself into the Christian Church.'_J The Ophites, even in the early times of Hippolytus, boasted that they of all men were the only real Christians, because they alone comprehended the i-eal nature of the Saviour. At the same time, they diligently attended the celebration of all the ancient Mysteries, notably the Eleusinian and the Phrygian, declaring that through their knowledge they had gotten the key to the hidden meaning of the whole ceremonial, which by types and figures foreshadowed the coming of the Christ. But indeed,] Gnosticism, in its primitive form, had almost supplanted, by spiritualizing it, the beautiful material- ism of the early Greek and Latin mythologies. jCatholicism, through its unity and greater simplicity, in the end triumphed over the conflicting Gnostic philosophies, which became extinct as a professed religion in the sixth century, so far as Europe was concerned, and whose relics in Asia were at the same moment covered over with impenetrable obscurity by the sudden deluge of the Mahommedan conquest. Nevertheless, even in the first- named scene of its domination, it was not to be eradicated with- out leaving behind it deep traces in the writings and symbolisms of the magicians, astrologers, and seekers after the grand arcanum throughout the whole course of the Middle Ages. Thus there is a passage in Dante (Paradiso, xviii.) replete with the profoundest symbolism, and which, of course, our Freemasons claim for their

10 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

own/and that with all possible security, because the very nature of the assumption exempts them from being called upon to pub- lish the interpretation of the mystery. The poet here tells how the^we times seven letters making up the ^ye words " Diligite justitiam qui judicatis terram " came forth in the star Jupiter, when the beatified spirits of just princes hovered over the final M, forming their hosts into the figure of an eagle. Certainly the importance given to the numerals five and seven in this revelation savours much of Gnostic phraseology, and reminds one of the thirty letters which make up the quadrisyllable Name of God, as made known by Truth unto the heresiarch Marcus, the history of which shall be given in the fitting place. Dante had before (Canto vi.) spoken of the " awe that over- comes him before the B and I C E," evidently the initials of some mighty password, although his commentators most prosaically interpret them as the mere diminutive of the name of his lost love, Beatrice. It was to its connection with Gnosti- cism that primitive Christianity owed the accusation of being a Magical system — a superstition not only nova but malefica. There is a curious passage in Dio Cassius, where, mentioning how the Christian Legion in M. Aurelius' Quadian War obtained rain from Heaven through their prayers, he remarks, " The Christians can bring about anything they desire through prayer." In later times the various factions within the Church were fond of retorting upon each other this ancient aspersion of the pagans : it was on the charge of magical practices, says Ammianus, that the Arians managed to depose and exile the great Athanasius himself.

The history of Gnosticism, written by its contemporaries, still forms a copious library, despite the losses and damages it has sustained through the injuries of time. In the carrying out of the chief object of the present work — the elucidation of the tangible remains of the Gnosis — no historical record has yielded me by any means so much service as " The Eefutation of all Heresies," composed by Hippolytus, bishop of Ostia (Portus), edixXy in the third century. Many points, hitherto seeming hopelessly enveloped in darkness, have been made clear by the careful perusal of his judicious summaries of the systems

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 11

of the different gnostic apostles. His views of their doctrines are evidently drawn up with equal candour and intelligence, and fully bear out his declaration, " that his design was not to vilify the holders of such doctrines, but merely to make known the sources whence they had really derived their pretended revelation." And he keeps his word throughout, never once indulging, like the later controversialists, in invectives against asserted practices, but exhibiting the tenets only of his opponents, and, with much ingenuity, showing up their gross plagiarism from Pagan philosophy. His eagerness for discovering the latter source in the fount of every gnostic stream, sometimes leads him to detect relationship that does not actually exist, and still oftener to pronounce a recent copy of the other what was in reality drawn directly from the same Oriental prototype — true origin of the old Greek idea with which he identifies it. But this invaluable, as well as most interesting, treatise breathes all through that spirit of charity and forbearance that made a writer belonging to a still persecuted religion, happy to be allowed to subsist through the tolerance of its neighbours. The abuse and scurrilous tales in which the later Epiphanius revels sufficiently indicate the writer belonging to an estab- lished Church, able at length to call in the secular power to assist in convincing all adversaries of their errors by the unanswerable arguments of rack, rope and faggot.

Irenaeus, a Gaul by birth, and disciple of Polycarp, himself a disciple of St. John, was elected Bishop of Lyon in the year 174. In that city he composed his great treatise generally styled " Five Books against Heresies," written in an easy and indeed elegant style, although in one place he excuses its rude- ness by the fact of his having been forced during so many years to converse " in a barbarous language " — a remark of interest as showing that Celtic still remained the vulgar tongue in his diocese. He is supposed to have died soon after the year a.d. 200; and therefore is somewhat earlier than Hippolytus, who was put to death in a.d. 222, and whose " Eefutation " was clearly written after the death of Irenasus, for he quotes him occasionally by the title 6 juaKapios, " the deceased " ; and has incorporated some entire chapters respecting Marcus in his own work.

12 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR EEMAINS.

The great Origen, another contemporary, has given some important details concerning the religious systems of the Ophites in his celehrated " Keply to Celsus." Two centuries after him comes Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus, in Syria, during the second quarter of the fifth century, who has left very full particulars respecting the great Gnostic school flourishing in that region. The other Christian writers who have treated upon the origin and nature of the same doctrines were nothing more than ignorant churchmen, able to discern nothing in any religion beyond its external forms, and which they construed in the darkest possible sense, ever seeking for the worst interpre- tation of which these external appearances were susceptible. At the head of this latter class stands Epiplianius, author of the most detailed and, from its furious partisanship, amusing account of the Gnostic sects that is extant — his vast Panarion, " Bread- basket," or rather " Scrap-basket," a whimsical title intended to express the motley nature of its contents, picked up from all quarters. This immense folio (admirably translated into elegant Latin by the learned Petavius) is of the highest interest, full of pictures of the struggles of the human mind to devise for itself a revelation that shall plausibly solve all the problems of Man's other nature. Its compiler lived as Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus A.D. 367-403, and displays great zeal in raking up all manner of scandalous stories against the enemies of his adoptive Church. But there is one thing that gives immense value to his labours, the minute account given of Manichseism — that latest and grandest development of the Gnosis, which had come into exist- ence in the interval between Epiphanius and Hippolytus.

The rule observed by all these later historians of Gnosticism is to represent it as a mere spurious offshoot and corruption of Christianity ; invented, usually out of disappointed ambition, by apostates from the true faith established by the several apostles in the Eastern provinces of the Empire — a mode of representing the system than which nothing can be more unfounded. For in its earliest shape, such as it shows itself in the doctrine of Simon Magus, or of Basilides, the heaven-sent knowledge merely added upon the old foundations such articles and terms of the Christian faith as seemed capable of being

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 13

assimilated to and combined therewith, whilst on the other hand she availed herself of the machinery of the older paganism to elucidate and prove the mysteries of the new theosophy ; and this was conspicuously the character of the systems of Justinus and of the Peratae ; as the very curious extracts given by Hippolytus from their text-books exhibit to the astonishment of the modern reader. That sagacious controversialist was right in calling all these heresies nothing better than the old philo- sophies disguised under new names ; his only error lay in nob going back far enough to find their ultimate source. Basilides, for example, never professed Christianity (in fact, TertuUian calls him a Platonist), but he superadded upon the esoteric doctrines of the Egyptian priesthood the newly-imported notions of Buddhism — that probable source of so much that is strange in the Gnosis. The introduction of the religion of Buddha into Egypt and Palestine, a fact only recently discovered, yet sub- btantiated by strong monumental testimony, aflfords the best solution for innumerable difficulties in the history of religion ; but the circumstances relating to this very important question must be reserved for a separate chapter.

As for the actual Text-books of the Gnostics, which in their day formed so immense a library (every founder of a sect being, as if by obligation, a mobt prolific writer, as Hippolytus shows by the number of works he quotes), hunted up and carefully destroyed by the victorious orthodox, never perpetuated by transcripts after the sectaries became extinct, all have perished, leaving one sole specimen to attest their nature. But this sur- vivor is of a character so wild and wondrous, that had fortune left it to our choice we could not have preserved a more characteristic representative of its class. This is the Pistis- Sophia, " Faith-Wisdom," a work to be perpetually quoted in the following pages, as it throws more light upon the actual monuments of Gnosticism than could hitherto be collected from all the other writers on the subject put together. On this account a brief summary of its contents will be the best introduction to our inquiry into the nature of the system.

14 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

PISTIS-SOPHIA.

This treatise, ascribed to Valentinus (I know not on what authority), was discovered by Schwartze in a Coptic MS. preserved in the British Museum. He transcribed the Coptic text and translated it into Latin ; both texts and version were published by Petermann ia the year 1853. The original is copiously interspersed with C4reek words and phrases ; in fact, the Coptic was evidently so poor a language as to have no terms of its own to express any but the most materialistic ideas. The matter of its professed revelation is set forth also with endless repetitions, bespeaking a language destitute of relative pronouns, of conjunctions, and of all the other grammatical refinements necessary for the clear and concise expression of thought.*

The authorship of this record is assigned by itself in several places to Philip the Apostle, whom the Saviour bids to sit down and write these things ! This circumstance made me at first conclude it to be the lost Grospel of Philip quoted by Epiphanius, but the particular anecdote adduced by him from that gospel is not to be discovered anywhere in this. But as the original is full of wide lacunae, which often fall in very interesting places, as if purposely defaced to escape the eyes of the profane, such an omission is not altogether conclusive against the identity of the two.

The nature of the book may be briefly sketched as follows. It professes to be a record of the higher teaching of the Saviour communicated to his disciples during the eleven years he passed with them on earth after his crucifixion, and when he had returned from his ascension into heaven. This ascension had been made from the Mount of Olives, where he received from on high two shining vestures inscribed with five mystic words (§16), and the names of all the powers whose domains he had to traverse. He thus (as he relates to the disciples) passes through the gate of the Firmament, the Sphere of Fate, and the regions

* It is intended to issue an English translation as a supplement to the present work.

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 15

of the Twelve Great iEons, all of whom in succession are terror- smitten, and fall doAvn before him and sing hymns of praise. On arriving at the thirteenth Eeon, he finds seated below and weeping the excluded Power Pistis-Sophia,* who gives her name to the revelation. She, having once caught a glimpse of the Supreme Light, was seized with a desire to fly upwards into it : but Adamas, the ruler of her proper place, being enraged at this act of rebellion against himself, caused a false light, a veritable ignis fatuus, to shine upon the waters of the subjacent chaos which lured down the hapless aspirant, and she was inextricably immersed in the abyss, and beset by the spirits thereof, all eager to deprive her of her native light. The doctrine of the admixture of light, derived from the Treasure of Light, with matter, its imprisonment therein, and its extraction and recovery by the appointed " Eeceivers of the Light," is the pervading idea of this revelation, to a greater extent even than in the Ophite scheme. As part of the same notion comes the frequent allusion to the Kepacr/Aos or chaotic commixture of Light and Matter, to re-organise which is the special object of the Saviour's descent from above.

At least one half of the book is taken up with the account of the successive steps by which she ascends through all the Twelve j^ons by the Saviour's aid, and the confession she sings at each stage of her deliverance out of chaos. Each confession is proposed by Jesus to a disciple for explanation, and is referred to some psalm or other prophecy containing parallel sentiments ; this concordance being occasionally made out with considerable ingenuity. A remarkable peculiarity is that all throughout Mary Magdalene is the chief speaker, and the most highly commended for her spiritual knowledge, though once she is sharply rebuked by Peter for her presumption in thus perpetually putting herself forward unbidden — and not giving the men a chance to speak. After Pistis-Sophia has thus regained her lost position, the most valuable portion of the

* This banishment of Sophia from assigns a different reason for her

the society of the other ^ons is the degradation, as in the system of

grand turning-point of the principal Valentinus, and also that of the later

Gnostic schemes, although each Ophites.

16 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

exposition "of doctrines commences. The Magdalene asks the great question as to the final cause of Sin (§ 281), to which Jesus returns a long and minute description of the composition of the soul of man, which is fourfold, the divine spark therein (a particle of the Light yet entangled in the Kcpacr/xos) being encased in a threefold envelope formed out of the effluvia of the rebellious -3i]uns, the tendency of which is to keep it in subjection to the passions and to themselves, so that when separated from the body it may not be able to escape out of their domains, " the regions of mid-space," here represented as places of pain. These iEons are elsewhere identified with the signs of the Zodiac. Next comes a detailed account of the Eulers of the regions of torment (§ 320), of their authentic forms, a crocodile, a bear, a cat, a dog, a serpent, a black bull, &c., and of their authentic names ; these last are not Semitic, but either Coptic or belong, judging from their terminations, to the mystic language generally used upon the Gnostic stones. After this we have the several punishments appointed for the various sins of mankind, and the exact number of years and even of days required for the expiation of each in its proper dungeon (ra/Aetoi/). These places of torment are all enclosed within the Dragon of Outward Darkness. It is worthy of remark that the serpent, whenever introduced, is a thing of evil — a sure indication that the book is under the influence of the Kabbala. The same conclusion is deducible from the malignity pervading the entire dispensation which it pictures; and the evident delight it takes in creating and parcelling out the various punishments, of which heretics naturally get the largest share. The philosophic Gnostic schemes have no severer penalty for those who do not listen to them than the want of Knowledge, and the subjection to Matter. After purgation in these prisons the souls are put into new bodies, and begin a new probation upon earth.

The judge of souls is the Virgin of Light, attended by her seven handmaids. Certain sins, but few in number, aie punished by annihilation, and admit of neither expiation nor atonement. But for all the rest instant remission is procurable, if the friends of the deceased celebrate on his behalf the " Mystery (or. Sacrament) of the Ineifable One." This must be

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 17

the very earliest notice extant of the belief in the efficacy of the offering up of a sacrament for the redemption of souls, There is a singular provision made for the salvation of a per- fectly righteous man, but who in his life-time has not enjoyed the opportunity of being converted. The angels take his departed soul, and carry it through all the realms of punishment with the utmost rapidity, and then conduct him before the Virgin of Light, who clothes it in a new body to recommence its earthly career, to obtain there the advantage of the mysteries and so become an heir of Light. The nature of the particular Mystery, so perpetually alluded to in this work, is in no place explained ; it is, however, the highest of the Four and Twenty : for such is the number of the Mysteries here mentioned, one for each of the grades in its celestial hierarchy, for the Five Marks, for the Seven Vowels, for the Five Trees and for the Seven Aniens. Throughout are interspersed frequent allusions to the seals, and the iiMm&ers of the Mysteries, courses, and divine personages, borrowed partly from the usages of the Temple, partly from those of the old Egyptian worship. They are repeated and involved in a multitudinous, inextricable sequence, that to one not having the key thereto belonging, strongly calls to mind the numerical vagaries that flit before the mind when slightly delirious : and which even the plodding German editor confesses, in his preface, often made his brain whirl as he attempted to transcribe them. Lastly comes a long fragment (§ 358), headed " a Portion of the Prayers of Jesus," which tells more directly upon the subject of these researches than anything that has fallen in my way. The Saviour, attended by his disciples, standing sometimes on a mountain, sometimes by the sea, and sometimes in mid-air, addresses prayers to the Father, prefaced with long formulae of the same character, and often in the same words, as those covering the more important Gnostic monuments. Some of these opening invocations are expounded, and seemingly paraphrased, in the prayers following them, though not in a very satisfactory manner. Also Jesus celebrates, with many singular formalities, a sacrifice of wine and water, which, there is reason to believe, is the grand Mystery or Sacrament so often lauded in the foregoing chapters. The whole closes with a

c

18 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

long exposition by him of the influence of the j^ons of the Zodiac upon the soul of the infant born under each, and of the fortunate or malign intervention of the planets in such cases. Of the latter the sacred names are communicated apparently as used by the Magi. A few Egyptian deities, e g. Bubastes and Typhon, are named here, and the Syrian Barbelo is frequently introduced, as a personage of the very highest importance, being no less than the heavenly mother of tbe Saviour himself. His earthly Mother is indeed represented as attending at these revelations, but she plays a very secondary part therein to the Magdalene and even to Salome. The last thing to be noticed in this most remarkable fruit of a crazy, mystic imagination — it is hard to say whether more Kabbalist, or Magian, or Christian — is the opposed dualism of many of the Powers introduced as agents in the economy of the universe : for example, there is an obedient and a rebellious Adamas (that highest name with the earlier Naaseni), a great and a little Sabaoth, and similar antitheses to be met with also in the later Ophite schemes.

THE BOOK OF ENOCH.

This most ancient (as it professes) of the Hebrew Scriptures being so frequently referred to as the highest authority by the JEon Pistis-Sojihia, a brief summary of its doctrine seems to form the necessary complement to the preceding section. The Book of Enoch, though often quoted by the Fathers, had been lost ever since the eighth century (with the exception of a few chapters of a Greek version preserved by Georgius Syncellus), until Bruce brought back three copies of it from Abyssinia. In the canon of that Church it takes its place in the Old Testament immediately before the Book of Job.*

* An English translation was The best German translation is that

made by Dr. Lawrence, Bishop of of Dilhnanu, 1857. Cf. Schoddo

Cashel, of which the third edition, Booh of Enoch, 1882. with notes, was published in 1837.

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 19

This book is divided into ninety chapters, and begins with the preface: "In the Name of God, the merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and of great mercy, and holiness. This Book is the Book of Enoch the prophet. May blessing and help be with him who loves Him, for ever and ever. Amen. Chapter I. This word is the blessing of Enoch with which he blessed the chosen and the righteous that were of old. And Enoch lifted up his voice and spoke, a holy man of God, while his eyes were open, and he saw a holy vision in the heavens, which the angels revealed to him. And I heard from them everything, and I understood what I saw." After this follows the history of the angels, of their having descended from heaven, and produced giants with the daughters of men; of their having instructed them in the arts of war, and peace, and luxury. The names of the leading angels are mentioned, wliich appear to be of Hebrew origin, but corrupted by Greek pronunciation. The resolution of God to destroy these is then revealed to Enoch. These topics occupy about eighteen chapters. From the eighteenth to the fiftieth chapter Enoch is led by the angels Uriel and Eaphael through a series of visions not much connected with the preceding. He saw the Burning Valley of the fallen angels, the Paradise of the saints, the utmost ends of the earth, the treasuries of the thunder and lightning, winds, rain, dew,' and the angels who presided over these. He was led into the place of the General Judgment, saw the Ancient of Days on his throne, and all the kings of the earth before him. At the fifty- second chapter, Noah is said to have been alarmed at the enormous wickedness of mankind, and, fearing vengeance, to have implored the advice of his great-grandfather. Enoch told him that a flood of water should destroy the whole race of man, and a flood of fire punish the angels whom the deluge could not affect. In Chapter LIX. the subject of the angels is re- sumed, Semeiza, Artukaru, Arimeon, Kakabael, Tusael, Eamiel, Damdal, and others to the number of twenty, appear at the head of the fallen spirits, and give fresh instances of their rebellious dispositions. At Chapter LXII. Enoch gives his son Methuselah a long account of the sun, moon, stars, the year, the months, the winds, and the like physical phenomena. This takes up

c 2

20

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIK REMAINS.

eight chapters, after which the Patriarch makes a recapitulation of the former pages. The remaining twenty chapters are employed on the history of the Deluge, Noah's preparations for it, and the success which attended them. The destruction of all flesh excepting his family, and the execution of divine vengeance on the angels, conclude the work.

Fig. 1.

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIB REMAINS. 21

GNOSTICISM IN ITS BEGINNING.

To begin with the received account of the rise and progress of the Gnostic philosophy, for that is its proper appellation, heresy being properly restricted to differences of opinion between, members of one regularly established community, we find that as early as the year a.d. 35, the Samaritans were regarding Simon Magus, as " the Great Power of God," and he and his disciple Cerinthus, are represented by the Christian Fathers as the actual founders of Gnosticism, under that accepted name.

Of the former, Hippolytus gives a history which there is no reason for not accepting as correct in the main particulars. He was a native of Gitteh, in the province of Samaria, and com- menced his career, and soon acquired great influence amongst his countrymen, by practising magic a^fter the " Thrasymedian method " (i.e. jugglery, as previously described by Hippolytus), nay more, by working miracles " through the agency of devils." Having fallen in love with a beautiful courtezan at Tyre, he bought her from her owner, and always carried her about with him, declaring that she was the " Intelligence " ("Ewota) that of old was imprisoned in the body of the Grecian Helen, then of the Lost Sheep, but now was restored to him for the salvation of the world. Even before the preaching of Christianity he had set up for a teacher of a new religion, plagiarised from Moses and Heraclitus the " Obscure," based upon the axiom that Fire was the First Principle of all things, subordinate to which were the " Six Kadicals " : a curiously compounded mixture of Judaism and Magism, of which Hippolytus gives a full though not very intelligible summary. " This Simon, after he had ransomed Helen, granted salvation unto men by means of his own himo- ledge. For inasmuch as the angels had governed the world ill by reason of their own ambitiousness, he pretended that he was come to set all things right ; and having changed his form and made himself like to the Principalities, the Powers, and the

22 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

Angels, wherefore it was that be showed himself in the form of man although not a man at all, and had suffered the Passion in Judsea, although he had not really suffered it ; moreover, that he had manifested himself to the Jews as the Son, in Samaria as the Father, and amongst the Gen,tiles in other parts as the Holy Ghost; but he submitted to be called by whatsoever name they pleased. The Prophets were inspired by the Angels, creators of the worjd, when they delivered their prophecies ; on which account they that believe in Simon and Helen pay no regard to them (the Prophets) even in our times : and they do whatever they please, pretending that they are redeemed through his grace." ..." Now this same Simon, when he was by his magic arts deceiving many in Samaria, was confuted by the Apostles, and having been cursed by them, he afterwards fell from his reputation and invented these fables. At last, having travelled to Eome, he again ran against the Apostles, and Peter had many encounters with him when he was seducing multitudes through his magical practices. Finally, having gone into the land of Persia, he took up his abode under a plane-tree, and there preached his doctrine. But at last, when he was on the point of being convicted for an impostor, in consequence of his making too long a stay in the same place, he gave out that, if he were buried alive, he would rise again on the third day. And in truth, having caused a pit to be dug by his disciples, he commanded himself to be covered over with earth. They therefore did what he commanded them, but he never came back unto this day, inasmuch as he was not a Christ. Now this is the story told concerning Simon, from whom Valentinus borrowed his first ideas, but called them by different names. For ' Mind,' and ' Truth,' and ' the Word,' and ' Life,' and ' the Church,' and ' Man,' the ^ons of Valentinus, are confessedly the Six Badicals of Simon, namely, ' Mind, Intelligence, Voice, Name, Eeason, and Thought.' "

But to go on with the series of teachers — this counter- apostolical succession — Simon was followed by Menander, he by Basilides at Alexandria, who, dying about a.d. 138, was replaced by Valentinus, born of Jewish parentage in the same city. This last is styled by Irenoeus "Chief of the Gnostics," on account

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 23

of the importance and wide diffusion of his doctrines even during his own lifetime. In Syria other sects were being founded contemporaneously with these, taking their names from Marcion and Bardesanes, both of whom tradition represents as Persians by origin, and consequently Magians by religious training. The latter is by some called a native of Pontus, a circumstance, however, making no difference as to the source of his opinions, that region being confessedly the seat of Mithraicism, and ruled over by a line claiming descent from the first Darius, or a satrap of his. It is needless to enumerate here the founders of less important sects, until we come to the uprising of Manes, author of the most daring and most permanent theosophy of them all, which fought twice over so long and obstinate a battle with the Catholic faith. This sect, its origin, and tenets, on account of the curiosity of its doctrines, and the immense influence that they exerted over the ancient and mediaeval world, will be considered at length in another chapter ; as will also the Ophites whose name figures BO oonspionously in the history of the primitive Church.

What has been mentioned above with respect to the countries producing the founders of all these sects — Egypt, Syria, or Persia — leads us to expect to find one common principle pervading the systems of all^ and such is most probably the case. The fundamental doctrine held in common by all the chiefs of the Gnosis was, that the whole creation was not the work of the Supreme Deity, but of the Demiurgus, a simple Emanation, and several degrees removed from the highest power. To the latter, indeed, styled by them the " Unknown Father " (or as Simon first designated him " The Boundless Power," and " The Koot of all Things "), they attributed the creation of the intellectual world^ — that is, the Intelligences, the ^Eons, and the Angels — whilst, to the Demiurgus they referred the creation or the World of Matter, subject to imperfection from its very nature. But in order clearly to understand the grand principloo under- lying these doctrines, it is absolutely necessary to possess the main features of the older systems from which these same doctrines were principally borrowed ; these systems boina: tliat of the Zeudavcsta, of the Kabbala (^vviiich is little mure than a

24 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIE REMAINS.

translation of the same), and of the reformed Brahminical religion as tanght by the Buddhist missionaries in the dominions of the Syro-Macedonians, or picked up in India by Alexandrian merchants visiting the emporia of Guzerat for the sake of trade.

Although to express their ideas visibly upon their monuments (the elucidation of which is the special object of this treatise) the Gnostics largely borrowed the images and symbols of the ancient Egyptian mythology (especially those connected with the Agathodaemon, the Solar god lao, and the guide of souls, the jackal-headed Anubis), yet these figures were employed in a new sense, unless indeed we suppose (what is probable enough) that their esoteric meaning had been from the very beginning similar to that published by the teachers of the new faith. This last explanation was in fact the perpetual boast of Valentinus, and runs through every article of his theosophy as we read it in the interesting summary given by Hippolytus ; and again, it must never be forgotten, for it is the key to many of the seeming contradictions in the different systems about to be passed in review, that Greek and Jew carried with them their ancient quarrel into the new field of the Gnosis. The former exalts the Bacchic Serpent, whilst he makes Sahaoth little better than a demon ; the latter continues to abominate the Serpent as the impersonation of Satan, but his Sabaoth is the " Great and Good " (as Pistis-Sophia perpetually entitles him), the defender of the believer's soul against the malignant " ^ons of the Sphere," and the influence of Judaism radiating from its second focus, the school of Alexandria, was so much more powerful than ordinary readers of history have ever suspected, that a few remarks upon this very curious subject will form a useful introduction to our consideration of its later philosophy.

INFLUENCE OF JUDAISM ON THE ANCIENT WOELD.

People in these times are still so influenced by the ideas engendered by the fifteen centuries of ecclesiastical regime, during which hatred and contempt for the Jewish race formed an

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 25

important Christian virtue, that they entirely overlook the influence exercised by Judaism over the minds of the heathen world so long as the Temple stood, and the national worship was celebrated there in all its glory. When the Jlomans, by their conquest of Syria, and soon after of Egypt, came into direct contact with the Jewish nation, although they disliked them individually, yet they conceived an intense admiration for their ancient, mysterious, and solemn worship. But, in fact, every institution, hallowed by the stamp of antiquity, immediately commanded the respect of the genuine old Eoman. The Emperors lost no time in gaining a new patron, of mighty and undefined power, in Jehovah, by instituting a daily sacrifice to be ever ofiered at their own cost on behalf of themselves and empire. The discontinuance of this sacrifice, by the faction of the Zealots which had taken possession of the Temple, is noted by Josephus as the consummating act of the great revolt and attempt to re-establish independence, which brought down final destruction upon Zion. To give a few examples of the hold Judaism had taken upon the imaginations of the highest classes in Eome, whence its vastly magnified power over the minds of the vulgar, may be calculated according to the well-known rule of proportion in such matters. To mark Augustus' freedom from superstition, Suetonius quotes the circumstance of his highly commending the conduct of his grandson Caius, his heir apparent, because — during his visit to Egypt and Palestine — he had forborne to visit Apis in the one and the Temple in the other country. Putting the two religions in this way upon an equality, of itself demonstrates the high place then held by the Jewish in popular estimation; for by that time the Egyptian, as the chapter upon the Serapis-worship will show, had to a great extent superseded the worship of the national deities of Eome. Fuscus Aristius, a friend of Horace's, and therefore to be supposed a person of consequence and of education, makes it his excuse for not attending to a business- matter, that the day happened to be the Sabbath, and that " he was a little superstitious, like many others."

The influence and numbers of the Jews actually residing at Eome under the Eepublic is strikingly exhibited by some

26

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

observations of Cicero in his oration in defence of Flaccus. Flaccus, when commanding in Asia, had prohibited the sending of money to Jerusalem. This money can only mean the tribute paid by each adult Jew to the Temple, of half a shekel, or two drachmae a head. Flaccus seized the money that had been collected for the purpose in defiance of his edict, amounting at Apamea to nearly one hundred pounds weight of gold, at Laodicea to twenty. The only gold piece of the age being the siafer, current for twenty-five drachmae, and of the weight of fifty to the pound, these collections would give us fifty thousand tribute-payers at the former city, and ten thousand at the other. The orator considers this " auri Judaici invidia " so damaging to his cause, that he explains the circumstances in a whisper to the jurymen, in order not to excite the indignation of the Jews amongst his audience. He actually declares that Flaccus's enemies had managed that his cause should be tried in that particular court in order to have the aid of the Jews domiciled in that quarter of Eome, to intimidate the jury, and so gain a verdict against him. " Sequitur auri ilia invidia Judaici. Hoc nimirum est illud, quod non longe a gradibus Aureliis haec causa dicitur. Ob hoc crimen hie locus abs te, Laeli, atque ilia turba quaesita est. Scis quanta sit man us, quanta concordia, quantum valeat in concionibus. Submissa voce agam, tantum ut judices audiant. Neque enim desunt qui istos in me atque in optimum quemque incitent, quos ego quo id facilius faciant non adjuvabo." (Chapter XXVIII.) And what is still more surprising this influence continued to work even after the fall of Jerusalem, and the extinction of the people as a nation. Spartianus mentions that Severus in his tour of investigation throughout Asia, when he forbade people to turn Christians, extended the same inter- dict to the Jewish religion also. Again, to show the natural good-heartedness of Caracalla, he instances his indignation on account of the severe flogging which a boj', Lis playfellow, had received from his father, with the emperor's approbation, on the 'icore of his Judaising. The circumstances of the friendship point out that the boy thus made a " confessor " must have belonged to one of the best families of Eome. Such a position yet retained by the religion of Abraham is almost inconceivable

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 27

at that late period, when it had, besides the vigorous and ever- increasing growth of Christianity, to contend with the varieties of the Gnosis wloich suited themselves to every taste, and in many instances had sprung immediately out of herself (not out of h.er hated daughter and rival), and by their union with heathen philosophy, were naturally more attractive to the Gentiles than the original parent. Even at the time when one would have expected the prejudice against anything belonging to that nation to have been the most violent amongst the Eomans, wo find Vespasian, the actual destroyer of their national existence, erecting a statue in the most honourable of all situations, to an Alexandrian Jew, Tiberius, who had assisted him in his attempt to gain the empire, in some manner not recorded, but possibly in his capacity of the Rothschild of the age by an opportune loan. It is true that Juvenal cannot repress his indignation of all this prostitution to a foreigner of an honour before confined to the most eminent of his countrymen, and hints it to be the duty of every true Roman to express his sense of the injury by committing nuisances under the very nose of the statue.

" Atque tnumphales, inter quos ausus habere Nescio quis titulos ^gyptius atque Alabarches, Cujus ad effigiem non tantum meiere fas est." — I. 130.

In the third century we find the model emperor, Severus Alexander, setting up the image of Abraham by the side of Christ and Orpheus, all considered as the divinely-inspired founders of the several schools of mystery (or to go to the probable root of the belief, as so many difierent Buddhas), in the most holy recess of his domestic chapel. A little research amongst the annals of the later emperors would no doubt, furnish many other examples of the hold taken by various particulars of the Jewish creed, in its Babylonian and Alexandrian phases, upon the religious notions of the Romans The fact is easily accounted for, when men's ideas upon the nature of the soul, of God's GovernmSnt, and of a future state, are entirely vague, as were those of the educated heathen of those times, when (old traditions being discarded as mere unsatisfying poetical fables) they attempted to build up systems

28 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

that should explain every difficulty by the help of reason and philosophy alone, although destitute of any solid grounds upon which to lay the first foundation of the fabric. Things being in this state, a religion venerable by its antiquity (itself an impenetrable shield against the shafts of infidelity, as even Tacitus concedes: "Hi ritus, qnoquo nxodo inducti, antiquitato defenduntur " Hist. v. 5), possessing a complete system that solved every problem by a professedly divine revelation, totally setting itself above reason and human experience, but proclaiming un- questioning credence as the most meritorious of virtues, such a religion could not but gain the victory over its disorderly and discordant competitors, which had nothing but arguments deduced from probabilities and analogies wherewith to oppose it. The same contest we behold passing under our own eyes ; Eoman Catholicism with its doctrines overthrown, exploded, rejected by reason, learning, and philosophy, for the space of three centuries, is again rapidly bringing back into her fold her lost sheep, which, having wandered through the tempting ways of Protestantism, and of philosophy or infidelity, however people choose to call it, and unable to discover any reason that will bear the test for standing fast at any ultimate point as the absolute truth, at last return weary and disappointed to whence they started, and find it conducive to peace of mind to accept assertion for demonstration, and the age of a tenet as equivalent to its truth.

There is yet another consideration that is of great importance in the present inquiry, which is the close affinity between the Judaism of this period and Magism, the extent of which will be pointed out in the following sections when we come to speak of the Talmud. Eemembering how much of the machinery of the one was borrowed from the other, there is little cause for astonishment at discovering that what are generally considered peculiarly Jewish titles of Deity upon relics, may rather be attributed to a Magian source.

The three circumstances thus briefly adduced — namely, the direct influence of the religion of Zion as a " mystery " of the most venerable antiquity, vying with those of Egypt and of Babylon ; its subsequent indirect influence through its ofi"shoots

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIK REMAINS.

29

(which left its visible impress upon things tangible); the virtue of its connection with the creed of the Magi, the secret priesthood, or rather, freemasons of the ancient world; these are the things solving the difficulty that must have struck any inquiring mind when beginning to study the so-called Gnostic remains. From the foregoing considerations, at least a plausible reason may be gathered for the fact of the Hebrew names of the Deity, and of his angels, and of the patriarchs, so perpetually being repeated on works presenting the figures of genii and of astral spirits— forms of idol-monsters the most repugnant, one would have thought, to the feelings of the worshippers of those sacred names, profaned by such union ; and imagery, from beholding which the true follower of Moses must certainly have recoiled in horror.

THE ZENDA VESTA.

The Zendavesta, literally " text and comment," is the doctrine of Zoroaster (Zarathrustrd), comprised in eight parts, written at different periods, but of which the earliest have been assigned to the date of b.c. 1200-1000. In its present form it was collected by Ardeshir, the founder of the Sassanian dynasty, from oral tradition, at the time when he re-established the ancient religion of Persia.

In this revelation the Supreme Being is called "Boundless Time " (Zarvana Akarana), because to him no beginning can be assigned; he is so surrounded by his own glory, and so far exalted beyond all human comprehension, that he can only be the object of silent veneration. The beginning of creation was made by means of Emanations. The first emanation of the Eternal One was Light, whence issued Ormiizd (Ahuramazda), the King of Light. Ormuzd is styled the Firstborn of Boundless Time ; and the " Ferouer " of him, or Pre-existing Soul (type or idea in Platonic phrase), had existed from all eternity within the primitive Light. By means of his "Word," Ormuzd created the pure world of which he is the preserver and the

30 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

judge. Next, he created in his own image the six Amshaspands, who stand about his throne, and are his agents with the lower spirits, and with mankind, whose prayers they offer up to him, and to whom they serve for models of perfection. These Am- shaspands, of whom Ormuzd is the first, thus making up the mystic number seven, are of both sexes, and the Gnostics adopted them, as we shall see further on, into their own systems, with the same distinction of sex. The next series of emanations were the leeds, twenty-eight in number, of whom Mithras is the chief. Like the superior order, they watch over the purity and happiness of the world, of which they are the genii and guardians. The principal names amongst them are Vohu-manOj Mazda, Asha, Vayu (Ventus), Geusurvi (Soul of the Earth), Sraosha (who exactly answers, in point of duties, to the Grecian Hermes and Jewish Gabriel, for he carries the mandates of Ormuzd, and conveys up to him the souls of the righteous).

The third series, the Ferouers, are in number infinite. These are the Thoughts or " Ideas " conceived in the mind of Ormuzd before he proceeded to the creation of things. They are the protectors of mankind during this mortal life, and will purify their souls on the Day of the Eesurrection.

The creation of these chiefs, with their angelic hosts, had become necessary. Ahriman, the Second-born of the Eternal One — like Ormuzd, an emanation from the Primal Light, and equally pure, but ambitious and full of pride — had become jealous of the Firstborn. On this account the Supreme Being condemned him to inhabit for twelve thousand years the space that is illumined by no ray of light — the black empire of Darkness. This interval will suffice to decide the struggle between Light and Darkness, between Good and Evil. Ahriman, in order to oppose his rival, created in his turn three series of evil spirits, corresponding in number, and antagonistic in office, to each one of the good, and, like them, male and female. The first series is that of the Arch-Devs, chained each one to his respective planet, and of whom the chief is Astomogt, " the two- footed Serpent of lies." These Devs are the authors of all evil, both physical and moral, thioughout the universe.

Ormuzd, after a reign of three thousand years, then created

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

31

the Animal World in six periods, creating first light — a faint image of the Light celestial — then water, earth, plants, beasts, and lastly, man. Ahriman had concurred in the creation of earth and water, for DarJcness being already inherent in these two elements, Ormuzd was unable to exclude its nature from them.

Ormuzd had produced by his Word a being the type and source of universal life for all creation ; this being was called Life, or the Bull (the same word in Zend stands for both). This creature Ahriman contrived to destroy, but out of its scattered seed Ormuzd, through the agency of the Amshaspand Saphandomad (^Wisdom), formed the first human pair, Meschia and Meschiane. This couple Ahriman, by a bribe of fruits and milk, succeeded in corrupting, having gained over the female first. Then, to all the good animals made by Ormuzd, be opposed, by his own creation, as many mischievous and venomous ones. The struggle still goes on ; the Power of Darkness often is the superior, but the pure souls are assisted and defended by the good genii, and will ultimately triumph. For when things shall seem at their worst, and Evil all-powerful in the creation, three prophets shall appear and restore the lost Light. One of these, Sosioch, shall regenerate the world and restore it to its pristine excellence. Then comes the general Eesurrection, when the good shall immediately enter into this happy abode — the regenerated earth, and Ahriman, together with his angels and the wicked, be purified by immersion in a lake of molten metal, so as to render them fitting members of the new kingdom. Thenceforth all will enjoy unchangeable happiness, and, headed by Sosioch, ever sing the praisas of the Eternal One.

The religion of Zoroaster was a reformed version of the ancient creed held by the inhabitants of Eritene in Bactria. For it is probable that the first gods of the Aryan race before it split into Indian and Zend, were the powers of Nature, Indra, thunder, Mithra, sunlight, Vayu, wind, Agni, fire, Armaiti, earth, Soma, intoxication. The worship of the last may have been the source of the Dionysia, introduced from India, as the Greeks themselves always asserted. These powers were called Ahuras and Devas indifferently ; but Zoroaster reduced all these

32 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

powers to the secondary rank of angels, and used the name Devas in a bad sense only. The Zoroastrian was the established re- ligion of the Persians at the time when they conquered Assyria ; and to a great extent it superseded the material idolatry of the Babylonians, whose gods Darius and Xerxes melted down without any scruple. But Matter is of opinion that the College of Magi, established long before the Persian conquest of Babylon, accepted the new religion upon the change of masters, retaining nothing of the old besides Astrology and Divination.

It must not be forgotten how large a portion of the Jewish captivity remained permanently in Assyria — only two tribes, Judah and Levi, having been sent back to Jerusalem by Cyrus ; and Babylon long continued the seat of a most flourishing Eabbinical school, whilst Judea itself, down to the time of the Macedonian conquest, remained a province of the Persian Empire. How important a part of the Persian population at a much later period were either Jews, or under Jewish influence, appears from the very remarkable assertion of Jose- phus, " that his nation were encouraged to brave all extremities in their final struggle against the power of Eome by the confident expectation of aid from their brethren beyond the Euphrates." And three centuries later Ammianus notices that Julian's invading army came upon a city entirely in- habited by Jews in the very centre of Persia. After the captivity, the principal literary establishments of the Jews appear to have been seated in central Asia. The schools of Nahardea, of Sora, of Punbiditha, were at least as famous as the schools of Palestine (cf. Jos. Ant. xviii. 12). The latter even appear to have paid a sort of filial deference to these foundations : the Chaldee version of the Pentateuch, made by Onkelos of Babylon, was accepted as the authorised version by all the Jews living in Palestine ; and the Eabbi Hillel, coming from that capital to Jerusalem, was received by the doctors of the Holy City as an ornament of the same national school, and this only a few years before the birth of Christ. From all these circum- stances it is easy to perceive how much of the Zoroastrian element may have pervaded the Jewish religion at the time of the promulgation of Christianity, when its principal teachers

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 33

were the Pharisees or " separatists," if, indeed, their doctors did not actually get their appellation from the word Pharsi, " Persian " — an etymology that has something to recommend it. These doctrines, as then taught, are set forth in the Kahbala, or " Traditions," so called from Kabhal, " to receive " — the main features of which shall be sketched in the following sections.

THE KA.BBALA AND THE TALMUD.

The origin of the Kabbala is placed by most authors much later than that of Christianity ; and, indeed, it is not impossible that its doctrines may have received great developments after that epoch ; * nevertheless, the elements of them go back to a much more remote antiquity. The Book of Daniel bears the most conspicuous traces of this antiquity, and to the attestation of this record are added other proofs no less convincing. The idea of Emanation is, so to speak, the soul, the essential element of the Kabbala ; it is likewise, as we have already seen, the essential character of Zoroastrism. We may therefore consider that it was through their very intimate connection with Persia that the Jews imbibed that idea.

According to the Kabbala, as according to the Zendavesta, all that exists has emanated from the source of the Infinite Light.

Before all things existed the Primal Being, the " Ancient of Days," the eternal King of Light. This King of Light is the All; he is the real cause of all existence; he is the Infinite (^En Soph); he alone is He, there is in him no TJiou ; but he cannot be known, " he is a closed Eye."

The universe is the revelation of the King of Light, and only subsists in Him. His qualities are manifested in it, variously modified and in different degrees ; it is therefore his " Holy

* The tradition is that it was first for the space of eleven years, the

committed to writing by Simon Ben whole of which he devoted to this

Jochai, who, being proscribed by work, in which he was assisted by

Titus, concealed himself in a eavern the prophet Elias.

1)

34 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

Splendour " — the mantle, as it were, wherewith he must be clothed in silence. All is an emanation from this Being ; the nearer therefore that any appi'oaches to him, the more perfect is it, and the less so does it become as it recedes from him : this idea of gradation is eminently Persian. Before the creation of the world, the Primal Light filled all, so that there was no ■void at all ; but when the Supreme Being, residing within this Light, resolved to display and manifest his perfection, he retired within himself, and formed around him a void space. Into this void he let fall his first emanation — a ray of the Light, which is the cause and principle of all existence, uniting in itself the generative and conceptive forces ; being both father and mother in the sublimest sense, pervading all, and without which nothing can for an instant subsist.

From this Double Force, designated by the first two letters of the name Jehovah (Yod, He*), emanated the First-born of God, the Tikkun, or " Universal Type " (Platonic Idea), and the general container of all beings, united within himself by means of the Primal Eay. He is the creator, preserver, and prime animator of the world. He is the " Light of light," possessing the three primitive forces of the Godhead : the light, the spirit, and the life. Inasmuch as he has received what he gives, the light and the life, he is considered as equally a generative and conceptive principle as the " Primitive Man," Adam-Kadmon ; and as man himself is called the " little world," or the microcosm, so this Being, his Type, is properly designated the " great world," or Macrocosm. In this their Adam-Kadmon, the principle of light and life, the Kabbalists have united the attributes of the same principles amongst the Persians.

Adam-Kadmon has manifested himself in ten emanations, which are not indeed actual beings, but sources of life, vessels of the Almighty Power, types of all the creation. Their names are : the Crown, Wisdom, Prudence, Magnificence, Severity, Beauty, Victory, Glory, Foundation, Empire. To Wisdom they gave the title Jah ; to Prudence Jehovah ; to Magnificence El ;

* The I. H. so conspicuously placed nearest equivalents the Greek alpha- on some Gnostic stones probably ex- bet could furnish for the Hebrew presses this name; as being the letters.

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 35

to Severity Elohim ; to Victory and Glory Sahaoth ; to Empire Adonai.

These are all attributes of the Supreme, as displayed in his works, through which alone it is possible for the human mind to conceive him. To the same emanations the Kabbalists give other titles, which constantly present themselves in Gnostic inscriptions. For example, the Grown (Parmenides also calls the Godhead ^rec^avos) has the synonym of Or, " Light," (possibly the same with Our, the name of a Sabean genius). Wisdom is called Nous and Logos, and is equivalent to the Sophia of Gnos- ticism ; she has also the names of Fear, Depth of thought, Eden, according to the several passions that animate her. Prudence is the " river flowing out of Paradise, the fountain of the oil of unction." Magnificence has for symbol a lion's head ; Severity, a red and black fire ; Beauty, the colours green and yellow ; the symbol of Beauty is an illuminating mirror ; Victory is Jehovah Sabaoth, having for symbol the pillar on the right hand, called Jachin ; Glory has the left pillar Boaz, called likewise the " Old Serpent," and sometimes " Cherubim and Seraphim ; " this principle answers to the genius Ophis of the Gnostic systems. " Jachin " and " Boaz " signify Strength and Power : they figure conspicuously in the symbolism of the secret societies of modern times ; and naturally so, for these illuminati have borrowed (probably without understanding it) all the terminology of the Valentinians and the Kabbalists. " Foundation " becomes the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil : also Noah, Solomon, and the Messiah — all which titles merely express the eternal alliance existing between the Supreme and all that emanates from him, and in virtue whereof he brings back into himself all the souls that have lost their original purity, " Empire " is the Consuming Fire, the wife of the Church — all three titles being also employed in the Valentinian system.

The relationship of the " Sephiroth," or ^Eons, to one another the Kabbalists represent by a number of circles intersecting in a mysterious manner ad infinitum; or again, by the figure of a 31an, orof a Tree, made up of such circles. The figure of the Man, Seir-Anpin, consists of two hundred and forty-three numbers,

D 2

36 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

Lers, being the numerical value of the letters in the name Ahram, and signifying the different orders in the celestial hierarchy. The first idea of this type was possibly borrowed from the Hindoo figure of Brahma and the several types typified by the different parts of his body, to which mystical values are still attached by the Hindoos.

The ten Sephiroth served as types or models for the visible Creation ; and from them emanated the Four Worlds, Aziluth, B'riah, Jezirah, and Asiah ; each world successively proceeding out of the one above it, and each in succession enveloping its superior. A theory this, possibly borrowed from Plato's de- scription of the arrangement of the seven spheres, as given in the " Vision of Er," at the end of his " Eepublic," where he compares them to a set of the hemispherical bowls used by jugglers, fitting into, and moving loosely within, each other (lib. x. 614b, se^.).

These Four Worlds become less pure as they descend in the series ; the least pure of all being *the material world. But nothing is entirely material, for all subsists through God, the ray of his light penetrating through all creation being the Life of the life, and consequently " all is God." This universal All is divided into thirty-two " Gates," the elements or energies out of which all beings are formed.

The world Aziluth is inhabited by the Parsuphaim, the purest emanations of the Deity, having nothing material in their composition. B'riah is possessed by an inferior order, who are the servants of Aziluth, although still immaterial creatures. Still lower are the inhabitants of Jezirah, to which world belong the Cherubim and Seraphim, the Elohim and the Bene-Elohim. But Asiah is peopled by gross material existences of both sexes, the Klippoth delighting in evil, whose chief is Belial. These last beings are full of ambition, and ever at war with the pure spirits of the superior worlds, whose empire they unceasingly endeavour to usurp.

The three superior orders just described answer to the Amshaspands, Izeds, and Fravashis, of Zoroaster ; as do the Klippoth, in their vast numbers and malicious nature, to his Devs. This discord did not exist in the beginning, it was the

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 37

result of a revolution in heaven, called the " Fall of the Seven Kings," from whom* the Creator, as a punishment, extracted the principle of good and light, and bestowed it upon the inhabi- tants of the three superior spheres.

This last notion is common to many forms of Gnosticism. The Ophites make Achamoth extract from Ildabaoth and his six sons the inherent ray of Divine Light, in order to bestow it upon Man. Again, the Pistis-Sophia represents two great angels, Melchisedech and Zorocothora (jjatlierer of light) making their annual rounds through the rebellious "vEons of the sphere " (zodiacal signs), and squeezing out of them all the rays of Divine Light that are still left in their composition, which having been all extracted, the fulness of time and the kingdom of heaven are come ; and so, according to the Kabbala, when the contest shall have endured for the space ordained from the beginning of the world, the Supreme shall deliver the spirits in Asiah from their material envelope, shall strengthen the feeble ray of his light that is within them, and shall establish its pristine harmony throughout all Creation.

The Human Soul is composed of all parts borrowed from each of these four worlds. From Asiah it gets the Nephesh, or seat of the physical appetites ; from Jezirah the Buach, or seat of the passions, from Briah the Neshamah or reason, and from Aziluth it obtains the Chaiah, or principle of spiritual life. This looks like an adaptation of the Platonic theory of the soul's obtaining its respective faculties from the Planets in its downward progress through their spheres. But the Pistis-Sophia, with its accustomed boldness, puts this theory into a much more poetical

* The author of the Book of consummation of heaven and earth

Enoch alludes to the same legend : will he the prison of the stars and

"Over these fountains also I per- the host of heaven. The stars

ceived a place which had neither the which roll over fire are those who

firmament of heaven above it, nor transgressed the commandments of

the solid ground underneath it ; God before their time arrived, for

neither was there water above it, nor they came not in their proper season,

any thing on wing, but the spot was Therefore was he offended with

desolate. And then I beheld seven them, and boimd them until the

stars like great hlazing mountains, consummation of their crimes in the

and like spirits entreating me. Then secret year." — Chap, xviii. the Angel said, this place until the

38 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

sLape (§ 282). The Inner Man is similarly made up of four constituents, but these are supplied by the rebellious ^Eons of the Sphere, being the Power (a particle of the Divine light ("Divinse particula aurse") yet left in themselves); the Soul " formed out of the tears of their eyes, and the sweat of their torments " ; the 'Avrt/xt/xov IIveiJ/AaTos Counterfeit of the Spirit (seemingly answering to our Conscience) ; and lastly the Motpa Fate, whose business it is to lead the man to the end appointed for him ; " if he hath to die by the fire, to lead him into the fire ; if he hath to die by a wild beast, to lead him unto the wild beast, &c." But in truth the entire system of this most wondrous Gospel is a mixture of the Kabbala with the ideas of Magian astrology, clouded under the terminology of the old Egyptian creed, to which belong its " Triple Powers," " Invisible Gods," and " the Proper Forms " assigned by it to the different ^ons.

All the human race having sinned in the First Man, that is as regards their souls, all which were necessarily contained within his soul at the time of the Fall, these souls are exiled hither into prisons of Matter, called bodies, in order to expiate their sin, and to exercise themselves in good during their residence on earth. Such as upon quitting the body are not found sufficiently purified for entrance into Aziluth, have to recom- mence their penance in this world. Hence the question of the Disciples whether a man's being born blind were the punish- ment for his own sins, which on this supposition must have been committed by him in a previous life. This penitential transmigration of souls forms a very conspicuous feature in the doctrine set forth in the Pistis-Sophia. The wicked, after under- going torment for periods nicely apportioned to their deserts, in prisons belonging to the several Infernal Powers, are sent into this world again to inhabit human bodies afflicted in different ways — lame, blind, or sunk in abject poverty. Similarly the righteous, but unregenerate, man is provided with a fresh body wherein to avail himself of the sacraments of the new religion ; which in his former life he had neglected through ignorance, and not wilfully.

The nature of God, and of Man, is therefore the subject of the Kabbala ; the Government of the Creation is set forth in the

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 39

Talmud, the doctrine of whicli concerning the Nature of the Angels is extremely important for the understanding of much in Gnosticism. The whole system in this particular is borrowed from the Zendavesta ; and could not have originated before, or indeed idthout the Captivity, so opposite is the spirit pervading it to the genius of the Mosaic Law. According to it, the government of all things is entrusted to the Angels, of whom there are seventy Princes, watching over each element, nation, and language. Thus, Jehuel is the Prince of Fire, and has under him seven subordinates : Seraphiel, Gabriel, Uriel, Temanael, Shimsael, Hadranael, and Samiel. Again, Michael is Prince of Water, and similarly attended by seven inferior spirits. Moreover, there are an infinity of Angels yet lower in degree, guardians of the various animals, plants, heat, winds, rains, &c. There also are others presiding over the passions of the soul, fear, grace, favour, love, and so on. Hence it is not to be wondered at, that the Angel who directs the course of the sun should have under him no less than two hundred and ninety- six hosts, whose sum is expressed by the numerical letters in the word Haaretz " the earth." The head of them is Metatron, the " number of his name " being three hundred and fourteen, and therefore equivalent to that of SJiaddai, " the Almighty." Metatron is the Persian Mithras ; the names of the others are all compounded with El " God," and contain his titles, or invocations to him.* All this celestial roll-call fully explains St. Paul's warning to his flock at Colossae against being reduced into a " voluntary (that is, an uncalled for) humility, and the worshipping of Angels," whilst the copious appearance of their names upon talismans strongly testifies to the veneration in which their power was held.

This last circumstance was a necessity of the case, for all these monuments proceed from two sources — the two great schools of Magi mentioned by Pliny, the most ancient, the

* The Book of Enoch thus states luminaries ; Michael, who presides

the names and of3Eices of the "Angels over human virtue, commands the

who watch " : Uriel presides over nations. Sarakiel over the spirits of

clamour and terror ; Eaphael over the children of men who transgress ;

the spirits of men ; Eagiel inflicts Gabriel over Ikisat, over Paradise,

punishment on tlie world and the and over the Cherubim.

40 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR EEMAINS.

Chaldean, founded by Zoroaster and Orthanes, tlie modern of his own day, by Moses and Jambres. So Juvenal, after bringing in the proud and pompous Chaldean, the maker of emperors —

" Cujus amicitia conducendaque tabella Magnus civis obit, et formidatus Othoni," (vi. 557-8.)

makes the poor trembling Jewess fortune-teller steal in with whispers for the lady's private ear — her profession going no further than the interpreting or the vending of dreams — " Qualiacunque voles Judgei somnia vendent." Such nocturnal revelations, we are told, were to be procured by sleeping with the proper talisman put under one's pillow. Thus, a writer on magic quoted by Camillo di Leonardo, lays down that " a woman with her hair hanging down loose, and a man approaching her making a gesture of love, engraved upon a crystal, or jacinth, being placed under the head upon going to sleep, will make one see in a dream whatsoever one desires." *

Such being the nature of the case, the existing productions of Gnosticism will be most appropriately investigated in the present Treatise by considering the nature of the various sources from which they emanated. The series commences with the Mithraic, as being the most ancient in origin, and in which the Magian and the Jewish Kabbalistic ideas are found the most frequently united. To this class succeed the Abraxas-gems, properly so-called, in which the Magian ground-work is modi- fied by the refinements of Basilides, introducing a strong tincture of the primitive Egyptian theology. To Egypt hersell more properly belong the Agathodsemon talismans bearing the figure of the good serpent, Chnuphis — an emblem which gave its name to that very wide-spreading and clearly defined sect, the Ophites. Last of all come the innumerable relics of the

* And again, the " sigil of a man man girt with a sword, having his having a long face and beard, and hands and legs extended, is held by- eyebrows raised, seated upon a plough, Aries, and placed in the north. It and holding a fox and vulture, with is of the nature of Saturn and Jupiter, four men lying upon his neck ; such makes the wearer cautious and pru- a gem being placed under your head dent; and put iinder the head of a when asleep, makes you dream of sleeping person makes him see de- treasures, and of the right manner of ligbtful visions." finding them." Also, " Cepheus, a

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

41

worsliip of Serapis, that most recent of all the gods in the Egyptian Pantheon, and in which the Brahminical influence is most distinctly to be traced. This last subject, so curious in itself, shall be the subject of the following section, where the numerous facts brought forward may perhaps serve to remove some of the incredulity with which such a thesis will naturally at first be regarded.

^...^sirnrTTirntis^

r4l ^.illtl^'tfc-;;,

Fig. 2.

42 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

INDIAN SOUECES OF GNOSTICISM.— Manes.

The Persian origin of so considerable a portion of the Gnosis having been set forth in the foregoing pages, it remains to show what portion is due to a purely Indian source, and to indicate the channels through which a direct intercourse was carried on between the farthest east and the foci of Gnosticism, Alexandria and Ephesus. For the Christian Gnosis was indirectly the daughter of the Hindoo Gnosis, such as it was taught in the various mysteries ; possibly in the Eleusinian and the Phrygian. For universal tradition made the first founder of mysteries, Bacchus, bring them direct from India ; and Jove's /x^pos, the fabled birth-place of the god, may have been no other than Mount Meru, the Olympus of the Hindoo Pantheon.*

Certain Gnostic tenets concerning the duality of the Divine emanations, absorption into the god-head, asceticism, penance, and self-collection, are identical with the Buddhistic teaching upon the same points ; of which agreement several remarkable examples will be adduced in their fitting place. But we are not left to mere conjecture on this point, for the actual circum- stances of their importation from India are minutely detailed, in one case that doubtless had many parallels, by the laborious Epiphanius in his " Life of Manes," (Heeres. lxv.).f

This celebrated heresiarch, equally abhorrent to Zoroastrian and Christian orthodoxy, was by birth a Persian, named Cubricus ; but who upon commencing his mission assumed the title of Manes, signifying in the Babylonian tongue "The Vessel," for the same reason, we may suppose, that Dante gives to St. Paul the epithet " Vas Electionis." This Cubricus had

* The bearer of the phallus (lin- (drawn upon by Epiphanius also),

gam) in the grand Dionysian pro- is the "Disputation of Archelaus

cession celebrated by Ptolemy Phila- and Manes," held at Charrae in

delpUus was blackened all over with a.d. 275-9. This book was written

soot, doubtless to indicate the native in Syriac, but is only extant in a

country of that very equivocal symbol. Latin version.

•j- The earliest authority, however,

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 43

been slave, and subsequently sole heir, to a certain wealthy widow who had inherited all the effects belonging to one Terminthus, surnamed in Assyrian " Buddas." This Termin- thus had similarly been the slave of a rich Saracen merchant, Scythicus, who had studied the Greek language and literature in some place on the borders of Palestine (perhaps the school of Palmyra), and who " had there attained to eminence in the empty learning of this world." By constant journeys between his home and India, this Scythicus had amassed a large fortune. With this he settled down in Hypsele in the Thebaid, where he married a beautiful courtezan, whom he had bought and emancipated. " Here, out of sheer idleness and licentiousness, he set up to preach new doctrines, not derived from Scripture but from mere human reason."

These doctrines, from the nature of the case, can hardly have been of his own concoction, but, in all probability, things that he had picked up in India, where all the ancient emporia lay on the Guzerat Coast, the seat of the powerful Jaina (Buddhist) monarchy. A mere Eastern trader, a common Arab merchant who, after making his fortune by long and dangerous travels in the East, who could afterwards in advanced life set himself down to study, nay more, to attain proficiency in the Greek philosophy, must have been a man of no ordinary intellect. Assuredly it was not the mere want of anything better to do, (as his malicious biographer asserts), that made him turn preacher of a new religion. His marriage with the enfranchised courtezan looks like a theological addition, added to the portrait for the sake of so completing his resemblance to Simon Magus. The nature of the doctrines he was likely to imbibe in the great Indian marts, Baroche, Barcellore, Pultaneh, or in the semi- Grecian cities of Bactria, is attested to this day by the innumer- able Buddhist temples and topes, with their deposit of relics yet studding the provinces this side of the Indus; and whose contents declare the flourishing state of that religion even when the country had passed under the rule of the Sassanian Kings of Persia.

But to return to Scythicus in his retirement: "Taking Pythagoras for guide, he composed four books, namely, ' The

44 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIE REMAINS.

Mysteries,' 'The Summary,' 'The Gospel,' and 'The Trea- suries.' " (Pythagoras was then universally believed to have visited India, and there to have obtained the elements of his philosophy, which has a certain Brahminical character.) " After this, Scythicus made a journey to Jerusalem in the very times of the Apostles, and held conferences with the elders of the church upon the Origin of Evil, and such like points. But not being satisfied by their explanations, he took to preaching magic, the knowledge of which he had gotten along with his other wares from the Indians and Egyptians. But as he was showing off a miracle upon the roof of his house, he fell down and was killed. Upon this, his servant and sole disciple, Terminthus, instead of returning to his mistress at Hypsele, ran off with his money into Persia, where, in order to escape detection, he assumed the name of Buddas, which signifies " Wise." (This last fact proves incontestably the nature of the doctrines he and his master had been gathering up in their Indian travels ; and the truth lying at the bottom of this story seems to be that he gave himself out for a fresh incarnation of Buddha, of which there had been seven* before his date.)

" This Terminthus was himself a man of learning and con- versant with his master's four treatises. He lodged in the house of a widow, where he used to hold conferences with the priests of Mithras, especially with two. Parous and Labdacus, upon the Two Principles, and similar subjects. He, too, having been killed by accident, like his master, his landlady kept possession of all his baggage, religious books included ; and in her turn bequeathed them to her servant Cubricus, the after- wards so celebrated Manes."

It is necessary here to point out a certain violent anachronism in the story as told by Epiphanius. If Scythicus visited Jerusalem at all, he must have done so before the year of its destruction, a.d. 70. His disciple, Terminthus, could therefore not have survived far into the second century. The landlady of the latter could for this reason have hardly had for slave Manes, who flourished about two hundred years later. It is,

* The seventh having been that Sakyal who, from Benares, diffused Buddhism all over tlie peninsula.

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIE EEMAINS. 45

however, possible that the works plagiarised by Manes had been preserved in her family down to the period of his service in it.

In this history of Scythicns, however disguised by tradition, we have at one view the complete history of the rise and progress of Gnosticism, We find an Arab merchant of a subtle and inquiring mind, occupying himself during his long and frequent sojourns at the Indian marts in studying the philosophy of these prevailing religionists, the speculations of the Buddhist monks, and equally investigating the secrets of the " wisdom of Egypt," when detained at the other head- quarters of the Eastern trade. Then retiring from business, he goes to Palmyra for the purpose of studying Grecian philosophy, as then taught in its school, which philosophy would be no other than Neo-Platonism ; thence returning home, he occupies his leisure in reducing to one harmonious system the numerous conflicting theories upon subjects too high for human knowledge, which he had so laboriously collected from the three great fountains of philosophy — India, Egypt, and Athens.

Finally attracted by the fame of a new religion that professed to throw the clearest light upon all things relating to God and Man, being preached at Jerusalem, he immediately starts for the focus of this new light, leaving behind him wife and property, only accompanied by one servant, himself an educated man, and his own treasured theological speculations. On his arriving at the Holy City, we find him (as might be expected from his previous training) grievously disappointed in his hopes of at last obtaining the solution of all the problems that had so long occupied his thoughts — for on subjects of that kind the Christian Presbyters could tell no more than what he had learnt already from the Bahhis of Alexandria, or the Jaina monks of Guzerat. Thus disappointed, he appears to have set up himself for a teacher of a new and higher doctrine, supporting his pretensions (after the customary fashion of the times) by miracle-working ; and as a matter of course getting his career speedily cut short, for Jerusalem was not the place where a new religion would be promulgated with impunity by a single indi-

46 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

vidual, and that too an Arabian. His disciple, iTerminthus, taking warning by his fate, resolves to try another school of profound ■wisdom, formed from time immemorial, but as yet unvisited by his master, and proceeds to hold discussion with the Wise Men of the East at their head college in Babylon, seeking for the final solution of his difficulties in the doctrine of Zoroaster. It is very probable that he, as the result of this study, engrafted upon the system of Scythicus whatever features of the Zendavesta appeared to him the most satisfactory, and consistent best with his preconceived ideas of the truth. It would be interesting to know whether he shaped all these fresh acquisi- tions into conformity with the original Indian groundwork of his master's system. As already observed, such appears to have been his course from the title that he assumed, declaring himself an eighth " Buddha," successor to the famous Gua- tama, founder of the religion, and like him commissioned to teach a new way of salvation. Terminthus, like his master, came to an untimely end. The Magi were not members of a powerful establishment who would suffer themselves to be puzzled and confuted by an over-wise foreigner, disputing so

boldly—

" Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, aud Fate, Fixed Fate, freewill, foreknowledge absolute,"

still less to allow him to go oif exulting in his victory, as his asserted follower Manes likewise found to his cost.

Manes himself appears to have belonged to the order of Magi (probably being admitted after gaining his freedom and changing his name), for he is reported to have been famous for his skill in astrology, medicine, magic, and painting ! This last is curious ; it shows that the Magi, like the mediaeval monks, monopolised the arts as well as the sciences of their times. Whether he conceived the scheme from the accidental acquisi- tion of the writings of Scythicus or not (M. Matter supposes him to have got his first inspiration from some Egyptian Basilidan who had found his way into Persia), certain it is that he first gave to these notions a definite shape, and constructed his system with such skill that it spread not merely all over the East but throughout Europe. In the latter region its im-

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 47

portance is evinced by the fact (mentioned incidentally by Ammianus) that Constantine himself, before finally changing his religion, following the Apostolical precept " Try all things, hold fast that which is good," carefully studied the Manichaean system under the guidance of the learned Musonianus, whom we must suppose to have been a great doctor of the sect.* Nay more, this religion, after long seeming extinction from the pertinacious persecution of the Byzantine emperors, again blaKed forth with extraordinary lustre in the Paulicianism of the Middle Ages.

The grand purpose of the scheme of Manes was the reconcile- ment of the two religions, which had by that time come to dispute the empire of the woild — the flourishing, though still unrecognised Christianity of Rome, and the equally vigorous but newly revived Zoioastrism of Sassanian Persia. Calling himself the " Promised Paraclete," Manes accepted the gospel, but only after purifying it from all taint of Judaism, whilst he utterly rejected the Old Testament. But whilst Zoroaster makes all to begin in the harmony, and to end in the mutual reconciliation of the Two Principles, Manes declares these Two Principles immutable and existent from all eternity as they shall continue for ever to exist. His Good is Zoroaster's " Lord of Light " ; but his Bad is Satan-Matter, deliverance from whose bondage is to be obtained only through the strictest asceticism. From the Christian Church he borrowed its institution of presbyters and deacons, being sensible how greatly that organisation had conduced to its rapid develop- ment, and in his own enterprise it met with almost equal success. Manes was a genuine Pantheist, teaching that God pervaded all things, even plants (of which tenet I subjoin a singular illustration from his once ardent follower, St. Augus- tine) ; he also adopted the entire theory of Emanations, exactly

* " Constantinas enim cum limatius gium dictitatum." Ammianus xv. 6.

superstitioaum qusereret sectas, Ma- The sainted Emperor's eulogists have

nichseorum et similium, nee interpres carefully hushed up this trait of an

inveniretur idoneus, hunc sibi com- inquiring spirit, anxious to weigh the

mendatum ut sufficientem elegit; relative merits of the existing rivals

quem officio functum perite Musoni- of Catholicism, anum voluit appellari ante Strate-

48 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

as it was defined in the older Gnostic systems. St. Augustine's words are ('Confessions' iii. 10): "And I, not understanding this, used to mock at those holy servants and prophets of thine. * And what was I doing when I mocked at them, except that I myself was mocked at by thee, being seduced gently and by degrees into such absurdities as to believe that the fig weeps when it is plucked, and likewise its parent tree, with tears of milk ? "Which same fig, however, should any holy man eat, that is to say, after it has been p)lucked through the sin of another, not by his own, he would mingle with his bowels, and breathe out of it angels, nay more, particles of God himself, in his sighs and eructations whilst praying, which same particles of the Supreme and True God would have been bound up in that fruit, had they not been set at liberty by the tooth and stomach of the chosen saint ; and I, like a wretch, believed that greater com- passion ought to be shown unto the fruits of the earth than to man, for whose sake they were created. For if any one not a Manichsean, being an hungered, should ask for the same, it would have been thought a crime, worthy of capital punish- ment, if a single mouthful thereof were given to him." Compare the following rule of the Buddhist priesthood : " They will not kill any animal, neither root up nor cut any plant, because they think it has life." (' Ayeen Akbari,' p. 435,)

Manes invented a theory of salvation, so very whimsical that it ought to be inserted here, to recreate the wanderer in this dreary and dusky theological labyrinth. " When the Son came into the world to effect the redemption of mankind, he contrived a machine containing twelve bowls (cadi),f which being made to revolve by the motion of the spheres, attracts into itself the souls of the dying. These the Great Luminary (the sun) takes and purifies with his rays, and then transfers to the moon ; and this is the method whereby the disk, as we call it, of the moon is replenished." Epiphanius triumphantly refutes this theory

* Alluding to the ManichsBan re- of Palmyra, for it is unmistakably

jection of the Old Testament as a borrowed from the eight concentric

divine revelation. basins set in motion, one inside the

t In the notion of this machine other, by the fingers of the Fates, so

may be traced the influence of minutely described in the Vision of

tlic study of Plato in the school Er the Pamphylian.

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 49

by asking how the moon's disk was replenished during the nine hundred years that elapsed after the Creation before any deaths took place ?

But the career of this inventive heresiarch was speedily brought to a close. The Persian king, Varanes I. (about the year 275), alarmed by the rapid spread of these new doctrines, convoked a General Council of the Magi to sit in judgment upon them ; by whom the unlucky apostle was pronounced a heretic, and a traitor to his own brethren, and sentenced to be flayed alive.

BUDDHISM.

For the sake of comparison with the above-described systems, all based upon the doctrine of successive Emanations from One First Principle, the means of escaping from the bondage of Matter, and the struggles of the souls towards ultimate absorption into its original source, I shall subjoin a very brief sketch of the jprincipal features of the Buddhistic theosophy.* Here also we find a First Buddha in his proper state of eternal repose (the Indolentia of Epicurus) corresponding to the Zoroastrian " Boundless Time," and the Valentinian " Bythos." While in this state termed " Nevriti," wishing to create the universe he ^produced the Five divine Buddhas, the makers of the Elements, who in their turn produced the Five Buddhasativas, and by their agency created the material world. The grand aim of this religion is to effect the release of the soul from its connection with Matter. All things, according to the Buddhists, exist only in illusion, consequently they can only return into non-existence or repose by means of True Knowledge (compare the Gnosis we

* Buddhism was founded in the years old. He chose Benares for the

fifth century before our era, by Sakya centre of his mission, whence in the

Mimi, son of the Raja of Kaj^ila. space of forty-five years his doctrines

At the age of twenty-nine he began were diffused over the fairest districts

to study religion, and by force of of the Ganges from the Delta to

prayer became the embodiment of Agra and Cawnpore. His death is

the Supreme Deity when thirty-five placed by some writers in b.c. 477

E

50 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

are considering).* " Illusion " is the belief in the reality of the eternal world ; the degradation of the soul towards Matter is the effect of a succession of acts ; and therefore its release is effected by relinquishing the belief in the reality of external objects.

The Buddhists of Nepal, who have preserved the original doctrines of the religion in their greatest purity, teach the following cosmogony : Padnapani, one of the original Five Emanations, created Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, or the Principles of Creation, Preservation, and Destruction. Adi-Buddha first created thirteen mansions for his own eternal abode, and for the dwelling-place after death of Buddha's followers. Below these are eighteen mansions made by Brahma; lower yet are six made by Vishnu ; and lowest of all — three, the work of Siva. These three series of abodes receive the souls of the followers of their respective creators.

Below all these lie the mansions of the Planetary gods, Indra and Chandra; and after these there comes the Earth floating upon the face of the waters like a boat. Below these waters are the Seven Patala, or regions of Hell, the abode of evil spirits and the damned. This arrangement presents the most striking resemblance to the construction of the Ophite Diagramma (to be given further on), which Origen has described from the original, and which M. Matter has reconstructed from Origen's description to illustrate his treatise in his Plate X.

The promulgation of these Indian speculations from so remote a source — a difficulty at first sight insurmountable — may nevertheless be readily explained. The spirit of this religion was the spirit of proselytism ; the Buddhists from the very beginning sent out their missionaries (some of whose narratives, full of interest, are extant and have been translated from the Chinese) with all the zeal of the old Propaganda. From the

* The Buddhist " Confession of causes of the cessation of existence."

Faith," regularly set up in the The essence of the religion therefore

temples, engraven on a stone tablet, is Perfect Knowledge ; the object of

runs thus : " Of all things proceeding Virgil's aspiration — from Cause their causes hath the

Tathagatha explained. The Great ' ^^^'^ ^1^^^ P^^^i* '^'^'^'^ cognoscere

Sarmana hath likewise explained the causas

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 51

mainland they converted Ceylon, Japan, and the recesses of Tar- tary ; and penetrated into regions where their former presence and tolerated existence are now little dreamed of.* That Buddhism had been actually planted in the dominions of the Seleucidae and the Ptolemies (Palestine belonging to the former) before the end of the fourth century, at least, before our era is shown by a clause in the Edicts of Asoka. This prince was grand- son to Chandragupta (the Sandracottus of the Greeks, con- temporary and friend of Seleucus I.), who, at the head of an army of 60,000 men, had conquered all India within the Ganges. Asoka, at first a licentious tyrant, had embraced the newly preached doctrines of Buddhism, a Brahminical Protestantism, and propagated them by persuasion and by force through the length and breadth of his immense kingdom, with all the usual zeal of a new convert.

The Edicts referred to are graven on a rock tablet at Girnur in Guzerat. To quote the words of the Indian Archaeologist Prinsep, to whom the discovery is due, (article xvii. ' Indian Antiquities ' ). "I am now about to produce evidence that Asoka'sf acquaintance with geography was not limited to Asia, and that his expansive benevolence towards living creatures extended, at least in intention, to another quarter of the globe, that his religious ambition sought to apostolize Egypt, and that we must look hereafter for traces of the introduction of Buddhism into the fertile valley of the Nile, so productive of metaphysical discussions from the earliest ages. The line which I allude to is the fifth from the bottom. 'And the Greek King (Yoni- raja) | besides, by whom the Chapta (Egyptian) Kings, Ptole-

* Two Chinese pilgrims, Fa Hian dence, have been found to be to a Large and Hiouen Thsang, visited Benares extent singularly correct. See * Me- at the beginning of the fifth, and at moires de Hiouen Thsang,' translated the middle of the seventh centuries from the Chinese by Stanislas Julien. of our era. These keen and sagacious f Asoka's zeal was so ardent that observers have left records of their he sent his son and daughter. Ma- travels in India of the utmost import- hendra and Saugamitra, as missiou- ance to the historian and antiquary. aries to Ceylon ; who in a short time Their narratives are, for the most effected the conversion of the island part, plain matter-of-fact productions, to their new religion, free from the haze and uncertainty of J The Persian envoy in Aristo- Hindoo writings ; and whenever they phanes' Acharniana used the same have been tested by extraneous evi- word, 'iaovav, for the Qreek nation.

K 2

52 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIB REMAINS.

maios, and Gonkakenos (Antigonus Gonatas) have "been induced to allow tliat both here and in foreign countries everywhere the people may follow the doctrine of the religion of Devanipya, wheresoever it reacheth.' " The " Essenes," so like to Buddhist Monks in many particulars (for which see the minute description of this ascetic rule as given by Josephus, ' Antiq. Jud.' XV. 10), had been established on the shores of the Dead Sea for " thousands of ages " before Pliny's time. " On the West its shores, so far as they are unhealthy, are shunned by the Esseni, a solitary race, and wonderful beyond all others on the globe ; without woman, renouncing all usual enjoyment, without money, associates of the palm-trees, from day to day they are recruited by the flocks of new-comers : all those flocking in numerously whom the world drives from itself, all tempest-tossed by the waves of fortune. In this way, incredible to tell, the race wherein no birth ever takes place, has endured for thousands of years, so prolific for them is other people's disgust at the world " (Hist. Nat. v. 15). The great Naturalist's " thousands of years " must be allowed as one of his favourite oratorical tropes, but nevertheless serves for testimony to the belief m the great antiquity of the sect. Perhaps they may have been a continuation of those early ascetic associations known as the " Schools of the Prophets."

The influence of Jewish Essenism upon primitive Chris- tianity (as to rules of life at least) is a thing that will not be disputed by any who have read, with a wish to learn the truth, not to evade it, the account of it given by Josephus. But over the semi-Christian Gnostics of Syria such long-esta- blished authority must have had a still stronger influence. It is easy to discover how the source of the slavish notions about the merits of asceticism, penances, and self-torture (of which Simon Stylites is the most conspicuous illustration), was the same one whence the Indian fakirs drew their practice — for even in their methods they were identical. Simon's (Cele- brated life-penance (which gives him his title), undergone upon the summit of a lofty pillar, had been practised in the same regions many generations before his time. The pseudo-Lucian, in his amusing description of the famous Temple of the " Syrian

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIE REMAINS. 53

Goddess " at Emesa (' De Dea Syria '), particularly notices the phallus or obelisk, 300 feet high, planted in front of the edifice, upon the apex of which the devotee sat without sleep for one and twenty days and nights, keeping himself awake by constantly ringing a handbell. Ideas like these pervade the Christianity of the Lower Empire, nay, they constitute the very essence of the religion. Neither is it difficult to see upon how many points Manes, with his rigid Buddhistic tenets, came into collision with the humane and rational law of Zoroaster (the brightest system of natural religion ever promulgated), and what good causes Varanes, with his spiritual advisers, had for condemning his heresy.

In our investigation of this particular subject it must never be forgotten that so hmg as philosophy was cultivated in Greece, (even from the times of the Samian sage, inventor of the name), India was often regarded as the ultimate and purest source of the " True Wisdom," the knowledge of things divine. Even so late as Lucian's time, the middle of the hecond century, that author cuncludes his evidently true history of Antiphilus and Demetrius, by making the latter, a cynic philosopher by profession, resign all his property to his friend, and depart for India, there to end his life amongst the Brachmanes, (' Toxaris,' 34). In the same century the well-known pilgrimage of Apollonius of Tyana, and his deep conference with the Indian philosophers, as recorded by his companion Damis, go to prove the same thing ; and although the meagre journal of the sage's travelling companion may have been largely supplemented and embellished by the fancy of his editor, Philostratus,* the main features of the narrative are doubtless authentic. The great thaumaturgist's proceedings, as there detailed, show how the apparent difficulty of such a pilgrimage vanishes upon a better knowledge of the circumstances. Apollonius presents himself, first of all, to the Parthian King, Bardanes (a " Philhellene " as he yet boasts himself upon his coinage), and as warm an admirer of Grecian savants as any of his Acheemenian pre-

* Wbo compused his very iuteiest- a century after the death of the ing ' Life ot Apollonius ' at tlie philosopher. re(iuust of the Eujpreso Julia, about

54 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

decessors, from whom he obtains a firman securing to him protection and entertainment, everywhere within the limits of his rule, which extended then, probably, as far as the Indus. Thenceforward his letters of recommendation from the " King of Kings " to the various native princes his allies, secure to the traveller an equally favourable reception. A safe and regular communication between the extreme points of the Persian Empire had been from the beginning the great care of its mighty rulers (the first institutors of highways, posting-stages, and post-horses), passing through what was not, as now, a series of deserts infested by robber-tribes, but a populous and well- cultivated country; so favoured, with a passport from the sovereign, the pilgrim would find his journey both expeditious and agreeable.

The same facilities were necessarily made use of by the natives of Hindustan. It is curious to observe how the occasional " Brachman " who found his w^ay into Greece was received as a model philosopher — like that Zarmanes Chagan, who, coming from Bargose (Baroche), finally burnt himself alive upon a pyre at Athens, in the reign of Augustus ; of which edifying spectacle Nicolaus Damascenus was eye-witness (Strabo XV.). Before him, we have Calanas the " gymnosophist " (a happy Greek expression for fahir^ in high repute at Alexander's court, and who similarly chose to leave earth in a "chariot of fire." Their example was followed by the " Peregrinus Proteus," so happily ridiculed by Lucian in his book thus entitled ; Proteus, to give his apotheosis as much celebrity as possible, chose for its scene the occasion of the Olympic games. This last worthy had been a philosopher, then a Christian teacher, and lastly had started a new religion of his own invention. That the sect so celebrated by the ancients under the name of " Brachmanes " was Buddhistic, not Brahminical, may be inferred from their locality, Bactria ; and yet more from a circumstance mentioned by Strabo (Book XV.). He speaks of their devoting thirty years to the study of Theology, living in a community (a vihar or monastery), sequestered from the world in the midst of forests in the neighbourhood of the difierent cities, and totally abstaining from sexual intercourse,

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 55

and all animal food ; on the contrary, the Brahmins hold that to leave children behind them is a most sacred duty, and one upon which their admission into heaven depends. Whether the Buddhists he the true representatives of the primal religion* of their country, or only the Beformers of the more ancient Brahminical Church, it is the natural weapon of all dissenters from an established creed, to ridicule and even to pronounce damnable, the favourite tenets of their adversaries. Witness Martin Luther with his invectives against vows of virginity, and his well-known motto

" Wer nicht liebt Weib, "Wein und Gesang, Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben laog."

Similarly we find the Essenes running counter to the ancient prejudices of their nation, and spontaneously embracing what the Mosaic Law had denounced as the greatest of curses — the leaving no offspring behind to keep up their name in Israel.

To exemplify the severe discipline maintained in the Brah- man communities, Strabo mentions that the mere act of blow- ing the nose, or spitting, caused the offender to be excluded for that day, as incontinent, from the society of his fellow-recluses. Similarly Josephus particularises, amongst other Essenian rules, the obligation of abstaining from all natural evacuations upon the Sabbath day. But even their rigour is surpassed, and in our day too, by a certain sect of Indian Yogis, who profess to have completely emancipated themselves from all such defiling necessities of nature. This they effect by living entirely upon milk, which, after retaining a short time in the stomach, they throw up again by swallowing a ball fastened to a string ; and maintain the animal expenditure solely through the nutriment imbibed by the system during the continuance of the liquid in the stomach ; and which consequently leaves no residuum to descend into the lower bowels. A doctrine this, the finest

* Which of course their theologians for the most part are worshippers of

claim to be, and treat the Brahmins Siva." And yet he candidly owns

as corrupters of the true faith. For that the Buddhists possessed no more

example Hioueii Thsang : " They than thirty monasteries, numbering

reckon (in the kingdom of Benares) only three tliousaud members, in the

a hundred temjiles of gods, inhabited same place, by about ten thousand heretics, who

56 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

possible redudio ad ahsurdam of the notion of meritorious con- tinence, and exhibiting on the ludicrous side the mischief of being too logical in matters of religion.

As for the profundity of the philosophical speculations of the Orientals, even at a very late period, the Byzantine Agathias quotes a very remarkable example. Chosroes (better known to us as Nushirwan the Just), besides giving an asylum, as to his brethren, to the last Athenian philosophers, when expelled from their chairs by the stupid bigot Justinian, caused all Plato's works to be translated into Persian, and professed to be himself able to comprehend even the mysteries of the ' Timseus.' The Greek sophist is naturally indignant at the impudence of the foreigner who could pretend that " his own barbarous and rustic language " was capable of expressing the divine thoughts of the Athenian sage ; for he little suspected that the great King, or at any rate the Magi and " Sufis " about him, were masters of the sources whence Plato may have ultimately drawn his inspiration whilst planning that inscrutable composition. The religious instruction of the Persian princes had from the beginning been ^^ carefully attended to, and proficiency therein was a matter of pride : thus Cyrus the younger puts forward his superior knowledge of Theology (in his manifesto upon claiming the kingdom) as a just cause why he should be preferred to his^elder brother.

Leaving out of the question the now received theory as to the immigration of the " Indo-Germanic " race into the farthest recesses of Europe, modern history furnishes the example of ex- tensive migration, effected under infinitely greater difficulties, by the hordes of low-caste Hindoos, who, flying from the invasion of Tamerlane, spread themselves all over Europe as Gipsies, still retaining their native language and habits, and to the present day claiming " Sind " or " iSindha " for their national name.

The facts adduced in the foregoing sketch will suffice to indicate the manner in which the germs of the various Gnostic doctrines were impoi ted from the East, how they v, ire engrafted upon previously existing notions, and how vigorously they flourished when transplanted into the kindly soil of Alexandria and Ephesus. To complete the general view of the subject,

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

57

"before proceeding to consider the tangible monuments left us by tbese ideas, it will be necessary to give some account of the forms in which they attained to their fullest development. For this purpose I shall select the three principal systems, re- presented by historians as the parents of all the rest, those of Simon Magus, Basilides, and the Ophites; the most satisfactory manner of doing which will be to transcribe the exact words of the well-informed and impartial Hippolytus.

Fig. 3.

58

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

SIMONIANISM.

"It is my intention here to exhibit the system of Simon Magus, a native of Gitteh in Samaria, and I will prove that from him all those that come after have derived the elements of their doctrines, and impudently attempted the same things under different appellations. This Simon was skilled in magic and had imposed upon , great numbers, partly by practising the art of Thrasymedes after the manner which I have already exposed (in the Book upon ' Magicians '), and partly by miracle- working through the agency of demons. He attempted to set up for a god, being a thorough impostor and altogether unscrupulous and daring ; for he was that one whom the Apostles confuted, as is recorded in the Acts.

" Much more wisely therefore and sensibly than Simon did that Apsethus act, when he aimed at being accounted a god, who went to work in Libya ; whose story, not being very dissimilar to the scheme of our foolish Simon, it were fitting here to quote, inasmuch as it is quite of a piece with the procedure of the latter.

" Apsethus the Libyan was very desirous of making himself a god, but when, after long labouring, he had failed in his endeavours, he wanted, as the next best thing, to be supposed to have made himself a god ; and in fact for a considerable time he did enjoy such a reputation. For the simple Libyans used to sacrifice to him as to a Divine Power, in the belief that they were obeying a voice sent forth out of Heaven. He had got together and confined several parrots in one and the same little room, for parrots are plentiful all over Libya, and they distinctly mimic the human voice ; and having kept these birds for some time, he taught them to say ' Apsethus is a god.' And when the birds in course of time were taught, and could speak that sentence which he supposed, when spoken, would cause him to pass for a god, then he opened their place of confinement,

I

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 59

and allowed the parrots to escape in different directions. And as the birds flew about, the sound was carried all over Libya, and the words travelled as far as the Greek territory (Cyrene) ; and thus the Libyans, being struck with amazement at the voice of the birds, and not suspecting the trick played them by Apsethus, accounted him a god. But one of the Greeks having clearly detected the contrivance of the supposed deity, did, by means of the self- same parrots, not merely confute, but also extinguish that vain-glorious and impudent fellow. This Greek caged several of the same parrots, and taught them to utter a contrary strain, ' Apsethus shut us up, and forced us to say Apsethus is a god.' But when the Libyans heard this recan- tation of the parrots, they all came together with one accord, and burnt Apsethus alive,

"In this light we ought to regard the magician Simon, and compare him to this Libyan, a man who made him- self a god in that very expeditious manner ; for in truth the comparison holds good in all particulars, and the sorcerer met with a fate not unlike that of Apsethus. I will therefore endeavour to un-teach Simon's parrots by showing that Simon was not the Christ ' Who hath stood, standeth, and shall stand,' but a man, mortal, generated from the seed of woman, begotten from blood and carnal concupiscence like the rest of mankind : and that such was the fact I shall clearly demonstrate in the course of my narrative. For Simon speaks, when in- terpreting the Law of Moses, in an impudent and fraudulent fashion, for whenever Moses says ' Our God is a burning and a consuming fire,' Simon, taking what Moses has said in a false sense, maintains that Fire is the Princij)le of all things. He does not perceive the true meaning that God is not ' a fire,' but ' a burning and a consuming fire,' and so not only mutilates the Law of Moses, but plagiarises from Heraclitus, surnamed ' the Obscure.' For Simon designates the Principle of all things ' Boundless Power ' in the following words : ' This is the Book of the Declaration of the Voice, and of the Name, from the inspiration of the Great, the Boundless Power. Wherefore tlie same is sealed, hidden, wrapped up, stored in the dwelling wherein the Koot of all things is established.' This dwelling

k

60 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

he says, signifies Man here below, who is born of blood, and also signifies that there dwells within him that ' Boundless Power' which he asserts is the Eoot of all things. But this Boundless Power (or Fire, according to Simon) is not a simple substance, in the same way as most people who call the Elements ' simple ' account Fire likewise as simple : on the contrary, he maintains that the nature of Fire is, as it were, double ; and of this double number he terms one part the Insensible, the other the Visible; asserting that the insensible are contained within the visible parts of the Fire, and that the visible parts are generated by the invisible. (This is the same thing that Aristotle expresses by his ' Force ' and ' Energy ' ; and Plato by his ' Intelligible ' and ' Sensible.')

" Again the Visible part of Fire contains within itself all things whatsoever one can perceive, or even fail to perceive, of things visible. The Invisible, on the other hand, is whatsoever one can conceive as an object of thought, but which escapes the sense, or even what one fails to comprehend by the thought. And to sum up, it may be said that of all things that exist, whether objects of sense or of thought, or, as Simon terms them, Yisible and Invisible, the store-house is the Great Fire that is above the heavens : ' As it were a great Tree, like to that seen in his dream by Nabuchadonosor, from the which all flesh was fed.' And the Visible be considers to be the trunk of the Tree and the branches, and the leaves, and the bark surrounding the same on the outside. All these parts of the great Tree, says he, are kindled from the all-devouring flame of the Fire, and are destroyed. But the Fruit of the Tree, if it takes a shape and assumes a proper form, is laid up in a storehouse, and not cast into the fire. For the fruit is made in order that it may be laid up in the storehouse, but the husJc that it may be committed to the fire ; which same is the trunk, ordained not for the sake of the husk but of the fruit.

"And this, according to Simon, is what is written in the Scripture : ' The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the House of Israel, and a man of Judah the well-beloved branch thereof.' Now, if a man of Judah be the ' well-beloved branch,' it is a proof that the wood can be nothing else than a 7nan. But as

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS, 61 •

regards the excretion and the dispersion from the same, the Scripture hath spoken fully and sufficiently for the instruction of all such as be brought to their perfect form : according to the saying, ' All flesh is grass, and the glory thereof as the flower of the grass ; the grass withereth, the flower thereof fadeth, but the Word of the Lord endureth for ever.' Now this Word of the Lord, says Simon, is the word that is produced in the mouth, that is, Speech ; for the place of its birth is nowhere else.

" To be brief therefore : since, according to Simon, the Fire is of the aforesaid nature, and all things that be, both visible and invisible, and vocal and voiceless, and numbered and un- numbered, are this Fire, therefore in his ' Great Eevelation ' he terms this the Fountain-head of all, the Great Intellectual, as constituting each individual of all things in their infinite order, which are capable of being conceived in the mind, and likewise of speaking, of thinking, and of acting. As Empedocles hath it —

"'Through Earth, the Earth perceive, through Water, Water; Through Air scan Air; through Fire the hidden Fire; Through Love view Love; through Discord, hateful Discord.'

" For Simon held that all the members of this Fire, both the Visible and the Invisible, possessed intelligence and a portion of mind. The world that is created, consequently, according to him, comes from the uncreated Fire. The commencement of its creation was in this wise : six ' Eadicals ' ( lit. Eoots), the First Principles of the beginning of Creation, were taken by the Begotten One out of the Principle of that Fire; for he asserts that these Six Eadicals emanated by pairs out of the Fire. These Six Eadicals he names, 'Mind and Intelligence, Voice and Name, Eeason and Thought.' And there exists in these Eadicals taken together the whole of the 'Boundless Power,' but existing in potentiality, not in activity. And this Boundless Power Simon calls ' He who standeth, hath stood, and shall stand ; ' who, if he shall be figured (invested with form) when he is in those Six Powers, shall be in reality, force, power and perfection, the one and the same with the Un- begotten Boundless Power. But if he shall abide in potentiality

62 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

alone in those Six Powers, and not assume a form, he vanishes and perishes, as does a grammatical or a geometrical power in a man's mind. For potentiality, when it has gotten art, becomes the light of things generated; but when it has not gotten art (execution) it remains in inertness and darkness, and exactly as when it did not exist at all, and dies with the man upon his death.

" Now of these Six Powers, and of the Seventh which goes along with them, the First ThougJd Simon terms 'Mind and Intellect,' ' Heaven and Earth ' ; teaching that the one of the male sex looks down upon and takes care of his consort ; whilst the Earth below receives from Heaven the ' Intellect,' and fruits of the same nature with the Earth, which are poured down from above. For this cause, says Simon, the Word, often looking down upon the things that spring out of Mind and Intellect, says, ' Hear, 0 Heavens, and receive with thine ears, O Earth ! for tlie Lord hath spoken : I have begotten and brought up sons, but they have despised me.' He that saith this is the Seventh Power, ' He who standeth, hath stood, and shall stand ; ' for He is the author of those good things which Moses commended, saying that they were very good.

' Voice and name are the Sun and Moon ; ' Eeason and Thought ' are air and water. But with all of these is mingled and combined that Boundless Power, ' He who standeth,' as I have already mentioned.

" Therefore when Moses says, ' In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested from all his works,' Simon, distorting the passage after the aforesaid fashion, makes himself out to be God. When therefore, the Simonians say that there were three days before the Sun and the Moon were made, they understand by it Mind and Intelli- gence, or Heaven and Earth, and also that ' Boundless Power ' of theirs. For these three Powers were made before all the rest. Again, where it is said ; ' Before all the world he hath begotten me,' these words, as they pretend, refer to the Seventh Power Now this Seventh Power, who was a Power existing within the Boundless Power, and who was made before all the world, this, as Simon teaches, is that Seventh Power of whom Moses spake :

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 63

* And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,' that is to say, the Spirit containing all things within itself, the Image of the Boundless Power, concerning which Simon saith,

* the image is the incorruptible Power governing all things by himself ! '

" Now the^creation of the world having been after this or a similar fashion, God, says he, made Man out of clay taken from the earth ; and he made them not single, but double, both as regards the image, and the likeness. For the image is the Spirit moving upon the face of the waters, who, if he be not clothed with form will perish together with the world, inas- much as he abode merely in potentiality, and was not made concrete by activity. For this is the meaning of the Scripture :

* Lest we be condemned together with the world.' But if it shall take a form, and spring out of an indivisible point, it is what is written in the Eevelation : ' The little shall become great.' This ' Great ' shall continue to all eternity, and unchangeable, inasmuch as it is no longer to be made (i.e., no longer abstract).

"In what way therefore, and after what manner did God form man ? In Paradise — for in this point Simon also agreed. But this • paradise ' must be the womb (according to him), and that such is the true explanation is proved by the Scripture, which saith, ' I am he that formed thee in thy mother's womb,' for so he will have it to be written. The womb Moses called Paradise by an allegory, if we choose to listen to the word of God ; for if God did form man in his mother's womb, that is, in paradise then ' Paradise ' must needs signify the womb. ' Eden ' is that same region, and the river going forth out of Eden to water the garden, is the navel. This navel is divided into four heads ; because from each part thereof proceed two arteries running side by side, channels for the breath ; and also two veins, channels for the blood. "When, therefore, this navel proceeding out of the region, Eden, is attached to the foetus at the lower belly which we commonly term the navel. . . [Here some words are evidently lost]. And the two veins through which the blood flows, and is carried out of the region Eden, through what are called ' the gates of the liver ' which nourish

64 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIE REMAINS:

the embryo. Again, the two tubes which we have spoken of as

the channels of the blood, embrace the bladder at each side of

the pelvis, and touch the great artery which runs along the

same, called the aorta ; and thus the breath, passing through

the veins into the heart, produces the motion of the embryo.

For so long as the child is being formed in ' paradise,' it neither

takes nourishment through the mouth, nor breathes through

the nostrils ; for, placed as it is in the midst of fluid, it would bo

instant death for it, were it to breathe, inasmuch as it would

draw a fluid and be destroyed. Moreover, the child is conceived

within an envelope, which is called the aminium ; but it receives

nourishment through the navel, and takes in the essence of tlie

breath through the dorsal artery above described. The Eiver,

therefore, going forth out of Eden, is divided into four heads,

namely. Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Touching and Tasting, for

these are the only senses that the infant formed in Paradise is

possessed of.

" This then, according to Simon, is the law which Moses gave

and his Four Books are written in accordance with that law, as

their own titles do manifest. For the first book is Genesis; the

very title, he affirms, were sufficient for the understanding of

the whole matter. For this ' Genesis ' is the Sight, into which

one section of the Eiver branches off, because the whole outer

world is perceived through the sight. Again, the title of the

second book is Exodus, which signifies that it was necessary for

the thing born to pass through the Eed Sea (meaning by

' Eed Sea,' the blood), and to enter into the wilderness, and to

drink of the bitter water (Marah). Now this ' bitter water '

which lies beyond the Eed Sea, is the path of knowledge during

life, which leads through places toilsome and unpleasant. But

after it hath been changed by Moses, that is, by the Word, that

same bitter water becometh sweet. And that such is the reality

one may learn from everybody who exclaims in the words of

the poet : —

" ' Black is the root, tlie flower as white as milk. Named Moly hy the gods, full hard to find By mortals : but the gods all things can do.'

" Even what is said by the Gentiles is sufficient for the under-

fRE, GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. O.J

standing of the whole matter unto him that hath ears to hear. He that tasted of the fruit given by Circe* was not only himself not changed into a beast, but by making use of the virtue of the self-same fruit, remodelled, reformed and re- called those already transformed by her into their own proper shape. For the Faithful Man, and the beloved by that sorceress, is found out by means of that divine and milky potion.

" In the like manner Leviticus is the Third Book (or Eiver) ; which signifies the sense of smell, or the respiration; for the whole of that Book is concerning sacrifices and oblations. But wheresoever there is sacrifice, there also does a sweet smell of perfume arise up from the sacrifice; concerning which sweet odoTir the sense of smelling is the approver.

" ' Numbers,' the Fourth of the Books, signifies the Taste, for then the speech is active, inasmuch as it is through the Speech that all objects are designated in numerical order.

" ' Deuteronomy,' Simon makes out, is so named in reference to the child that has been formed for Touching. For as the Touch doth by feeling reciprocate and confirm the impressions received by the othet senses ; proving an object to be either hard, or hot, or slippery — in the like manner the Fifth Book of the Law is a recapitulation of the four preceding Books.

" All things, therefore (continues he), that are not created exist within lis in potentiality, not in activity ; like the science of grammar, or of geometry. In the case, therefore, where thev shall have met with the proper training and instruction, there ' shall the Bitter be turned into Sweet ' ; that is, ' the spears shall be turned into reaping-hooks, and the swords into plough- shares ; ' they shall be no longer chaff and sticks born for the fire, but the Perfect Fruit, like and equal, as alreadj' said, unto the Unbegotten and Boundless Power. But where the Tree shall stand alone, not bearing fruit, there, because it hath not received form, it shall be destroyed. ' For now (saith he) the axe is nigh unto the root of the tree. Every tree therefore that beareth not good fruit, is hewn down and cast info the fire.'

* Simon has here forgotten his "Odysspy"; tlie antidote Moly having been given to Ulyssts by Hermes.

66 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

" According to Simon, therefore, that blessed and inscrutable thing lies hidden, and within every man, but in potentiality alone, not in activity; the which is 'He who standeth, hath stood, and shall stand ' ; who standeth above in the Unbegotten Power, who hath stood helow in the ' Eiver of Waters ' when he was begotten in the image, and who shall stand above by the side of the Blessed and Boundless Power, provided that he shall have received form. For there are three that stand, and unless there be the three iEons that stand, ' the Begotten One is not adorned,' meaning Him, who, according to Simon's teaching, moved upon the face of the waters ; who hath been re-created after the image, perfect and heavenly ; who likewise is in no degree lower than the Unbegotten Power."

" This is a saying amongst the Simonians, ' I and thou are one ; thou before me, I after thee.' ' This is the One Power, divided into Above and Below, begetting itself, nourishing itself, seeking after itself, finding itself, being its own mother, its own father, its own sister, its own consort, its own daughter, son mother, father, inasmuch as it alone is the Eoot of all things.'

" That Fire is the origin of the generation of all things gene- rated, Simon demonstrates after this fashion. ' Of all things whatsoever that exist, being generated, the final cause of the desire for their generation proceeds out of Fire. For " to be set on fire " is the term used to designate the desire of the act of generation and propagation. Now this " Fire," which is one, is changed into two. For in the male the blood which is hot and red, like Fire in a visible shape, is converted into seed ; in the female this same blood is converted into milk. And this change in the male becomes the generation-faculty itself; whilst the change in the female becomes the instrument (efficient cause), of the thing begotten. This (according to Simon) is the " Flaming Sword," which is brandished to keep the way unto the Tree of Life. For the blood is turned into seed and into milk ; and this Power becomes both father and mother ; the father of those that be born, and the nutriment of those that be nourished ; standing in need of none other, sufficient unto itself. More- over the Tree of Life, which is guarded by the brandished flaming sword is, as we have said, the Seventh Power, the selfrbegotteti,

THE aNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 67

which comprehends all the others, and which is deposited within the other Six Powers. For if that Flaming Sword should not be brandished, then would that beautiful Tree be destroyed and perish ; but when it is changed into the seed and the milk, then He that is stored up within them in potentiality, having ob- tained the necessary Logos (JReason) and the fitting place wherein that Logos may be generated, then, beginning as it were from the smallest spark, he shall wax great to perfection, and increase, and become a Power without end, and without change, being equal and like unto the infinite ^on, being no more begotten again to all eternity.'

" Now, on the strength of this theory, as all are agreed, Simon made himself out a god unto the ignorant, like that Libyan Apsethus above mentioned ; ' being begotten and subject to passion so long as he is in potentiality, but not subject to passion after he shall have been begotten, and have received the image, and having been made perfect shall pass out of the dominion of the first two Powers, that is, of Heaven and Earth.' For Simon speaks expressly upon this point in his ' Eevelation,' in the following manner. ' Unto you therefore I say what I say, and write what I write. The Writing is this. There are Two stocks of all the iEons put together, having neither be- ginning nor end, springing out of one Root, the which is Silence, invisible, inconceivable, of which Stocks, the one shows itself from above, the which is a great Power, Mind of the all, per- vading all things, and of the male sex : the other, showing itself from below, is the Great Intelligence, and is of the female sex ; generating all things. From thence they correspond with each other, and keep up a partnership, and illuminate the Middle Space lying between them (which is the air), inconceivable, having neither beginning nor end. In this Middle Space is the Father, who bears up all things and nourishes the things that have beginning and ending. This is " He who standeth, hath stood, and shall stand ; being both male and female, a Power after the image of the pre-existing infinite Power, that hath neither beginning nor ending, existing in Unity.'" For the In- telligence in Unity proceeded out of this last and became Twain. Now He (the Father) is One, for whilst he contained that

F 2

68 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

Power within himself he was single ; nevertheless he was not the First, although he was pre-existent, but when he was mani- fested to himself out of himself, he became Second, and neither was he named the " Father," before that Power called him Father. In the like manner therefore as the drawing-forth himself out of himself manifested unto himself his own Intelli- gence, so did this Intelligence also, when manifested, not create, but contemplate Him; and thereby stood-up the Father within herself, that is to say, the Power. And this Intelligence like- wise is both a male and female Power ; on which account they answer to one another, for the Power differs not at all from the Intelligence, being one and the same. From that which is above, indeed, is formed the Power ; from that which is below, the Intelligence. Of the same kind therefore is the Unity, which is manifested out of them buth ; for being one it is found to be Twain ; both male and female, containing within itself the female. In this manner the Mind exists within the Intelli- gence ; which, when severed from each other, although they are One, are found to be Two.'

" Simon, therefore, by publishing these notions, did not merely distort and wrest to his own purpose the sayings of Moses, but equally those of the heathen poets. For he makes an allegory out of the Trojan Horse of wood, and the story of Helen with the torch, and much else, which he applies to his own fables concerning himself and his ' Intelligence.' * Again he makes out the latter to be the Lost Sheep, which, always taking up her abode in the persons of women, doth cause trouble amongst all earthly Powers by reason of her incomparable beauty ; where- fore the Trojan War came to pass because of her. For this ' Intelligence ' * of his took up her abode in Helen who was born just at that time ; and so, when the Powers laid claim to her possession, strife and discord arose amongst all the nations to whom she manifested herself. At any rate, it was on this account that Stesichorus, for having reviled her in his verses, was deprived of sight ; but afterwards, when he had repented,

* That is his wife Helena. By a of Novara also went about accom- remarkable, though doubtless un- panied by a similar female " Intelli- designed coincidence, Fia Dolcino gence."

I

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 69

and written his ' Recantation,' in which he sang her praises, he recovered the use of his eyes. Then, after she had been placed in another body by the Angels and the Powers below (who according to Simon were the creators of the world), she was standing upon a housetop* in Tyre, a city of Phoenicia, where he found her on his landing. For he pretends to have gone thither expressly in quest of her, to deliver her out of bondage ; and, after having ransomed her, he always carried her about with him, pretending that this was the Lost Sheep, and he himself was the Power that is over all. But the truth is, the impostor had become enamoured of this harlot, whose real name was Helena, so that he bought and kept her ; but out ot shame as regards his disciples, he invented the aforesaid fable. Furthermore, nowadays those that be the followers of this deceiver and magician, Simon, imitate his example, asserting that it is right to have intercourse with all women promiscuously, for they say ' All land is land, and it matters not where one sows his seed so long as he does sow it.' Nay more, they pride themselves upon this promiscuous intercourse, affirming that this is the ' Perfect Love,' and quote tiie text ' The Holy of holies shall be made holy.' For they hold that they are bound by no obligation as regards anything usually accounted wicked, inasmuch as they have been redeemed. In this way, Simon, after he had ransomed Helena, granted salvation unto men by means of his own Knowledge (or the Gnosis). For inasmuch as the Angels governed the world badly by reason of their own ambitiousness, Simon pretended that he was come to set all things right, having changed his form, and made himself like to the Principalities, the Powers, and the Angels ; wherefore it was that he appeared in man's shape, though not a man at all, and had suffered the Passion in Judeea, although he had not suffered it ; moreover that he had manifested himself to the Jews as the Son, in Samaria as the Father, and anjongst the Gentiles elsewhere as the Holy Ghost, but that he submitted to be called by whatever name men pleased. The Prophets were inspired by the Angels, creators of the world, when they

* A euphemism for " liviug in a which these ladies advertised tliem- brothel," such being the mode in selves.

70 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

delivered their prophecies ; on which account those who believe in Simon and Helena pay no regard to them, even in our times ; and they do whatever they please, affirming that they are re- deemed through Ms grace. For nothing is the cause of dam- nation, supposing a man to act wickedly, for Evil is evil not through the nature of things but by convention. For the Angels who created the world ordained it to be so (as they assert), in order that they might keep in subjection, by means of such fictions, all men who should listen to them. Furthermore they explain the dissolution of the world as referring to the redemp- tion of their own sect.

" The disciples, therefore, of this Simon, practise magic arts and incantation, and make philtres and seductive spells ; they likewise send the so-called 'dream-bringing' demons to trouble whomsoever they choose. They likewise practise the rites of the gods named Paredroi (the Assessors) ; they have also an image of Simon in the guise of Jupiter, and likewise one of Helena in the figure of Minerva ; and these they worship, calling one the ' Master,' the other the ' Mistress.' "*

So much for the system of the renowned Samaritan, in which, it will have been seen, the place of logical reasoning is supplied by quibbles upon words, taken absolutely without any reference to the context — a style of argument, however, for which it must be confessed that he had highly respectable authority. In strong contrast to this stands the next system, which displays much of the refinement and sound training (amidst its extrava- gance) of the Grecian mind.

BASILIDES.

Hippolytus, in accordance with his theses that all these " heresies " were mere plagiarisms from the more ancient philosophical systems, declares that Basilides stole the entire of his scheme from Aristotle, and proceeds to establish his charge by the following comparative analysis of the two.

"Aristotle divides all substance into the Genus, the Species,

* Here follows the account of his career and cud, already extracted (pp. 21, 22).

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS, 71

and tlie Individual. The Genus is, as it were, a heap composed of many and different seeds, from which heap all the Species are taken ; and the genus is the sufficient cause to all things that exist. For example, ' Animal ' is used absolutely, not signifying any particular animal. 'Animal' does not signify a horse, an ox, or a man, hut simply ' animal.' From this abstract ' animal ' all the species of animals universally derive their origin, and this ' animal ' without species is the origin of all animals generated according to their species, and not any one thing of things generated. Thus, Man is an animal, deriving his origin from the ' animal,' and Horse is an animal in the same manner. Similarly all other animals are derived from that 'animal,' who yet in itself is none of them. If therefore that ' animal ' is none of these, then, according to Aristotle, the substance of all things that are proceeds out of things that are non-existent, inasmuch as the ' animal,' out of which they all proceed individually, is not one thing (or ' is nothing at all '). And this, being Nothing, is the origin of all that be.

" Now substance being divided into three classes — the genus, the species, and the individual — we have defined the genus as * animal,' ' man ' as the species picked out of the heap of animals, but as yet undiscriminated, and not separated into the form of a particular being. But when I define by a special name, like Socrates, or Diogenes, a man taken from the species

the genus, then that being is termed the ' individual.' Thus the genus is divided into species, the species into individual ; but the individual once being defined by name cannot be divided any further. This is what Aristotle calls justly and properly ' Substance,' that which cannot be predicated ' of the subject,' nor ' in the subject.' By the term ' of the subject ' he means such an idea as ' animal,' which can be predicated of all the subject animals individually — as a horse, an ox, a man — all being called by the same name, ' animal.' Hence, what can be predicated ' of the subject ' is that which applies to many and different species indiscriminately. ' In the subject ' means that which cannot be predicated without the previous existence of something else wherein it may exist, as ' white,' ' black,'

72 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

' just,' ' unjust ; ' wliich are the ' accidents ' to substance, and therefore called ' qualities,' because expressing icJiat sort of thing each thing is. But no one quality can exist in itself; there must be something else for it to exist in. If, therefore, neither the genus 'animal,' which is predicated of all aniinals existing individually, nor ' accident,' which is only to be found in things that exist, can either of them exist by themselves ; and if indi- viduals are made up of these two, namely genus and accident, then it follows that substance, which is made up of these three, and nothing besides, is made up of things that are non-existent.

" If, therefore, what is properly and primarily termed ' sub- stance ' (the Individual) is made up of these, it is, according to Aristotle, made up of things non-existent.

" Besides the terms Genus, Species, Individual, Substance is further designated as ' Matter ' and ' Formation.' Upon this definition rests the Basilidan theory of the Universe. The Universe Basilides divides into several parts : That part which extends from the earth up to the moon is destitute of foresight and of conduct, and is content with its own nature. The part beyond the moon is constituted with foresight, reason, and conduct, up to the surface of heaven. This ' surface ' is a fifth substance, free from all the elements out of which the world was created ; this, therefore, is the ' fifth and supra-mundane substance.' These three divisions Aristotle has treated of in three separate works : his ' Physics,' ' Metaphysics,' and ' On the Fifth Substance.' Not merely his ideas, but his words and terminology have been borrowed by Basilides, and applied to the Scriptures. How, then, can his disciples, being in reality heathens, expect to be benefited by Christ ?

" Basilides and his true son and disciple Isidorus, assert that Matthew (the Evangelist) revealed to them certain secret doctrines which had been specially communicated to himself by Christ. ' There was a time when there was Nothing ; nay, not even that " Nothing " was anything of being, but barely and without reserve, and without any sophism, there was altogether Nothing. When I use the term " was," I do not mean to imply that this Nothing 'was, but in order to explain what I wish to set forth, I employ the expression " there loas absolutely

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 73

Nothing." Now that which is called " Ineffable " is not abso- lutely ineffable, for we ourselves give it that name of ineffable ; whereas that which is not even ineffable is not " ineffable," but infinitely above every name that can be named. Even for the Visible world, so multifarious are its divisions that we have not names enough ; but we are reduced to conceive many of its properties from the names of the properties already named, these (other) properties being ineffable. For an identity of names occasions a disorder and confusion of ideas in the mind of the learner.' (This is a direct plagiarism from Aristotle's discussion of synonyms in his book ' On the Categories.')

" When therefore Nothing was — no substance, no non-sub- stance, no simple, no compound, no incomprehensible, no sensible, no man, no angel, no God — when there was nothing whatever of what is called by name, perceived by sense, conceived by the mind, but all, and even in a more refined sense than this, being put out of the question — then this No- being God (Aristotle's ' thought of a thought,' which Basilides alters into his ' No-being '), without thought, without purpose, without counsel, without passion, without desire, willed to make the world. I use the word 'willed' merely to express my meaning, it being without thought, without sensation, without will, that this was done ; and by ' world ' I do not mean that world created afterwards and divided by latitude and longitude, but I understand by it ' the Seed of the World.' This ' Seed of the World ' contained the All within itself, just as the germ of the mustard-seed contains the root, the stalk, the leaves, the grain, the last containing again the rudiments of others innumerable. Thus the No-being God created the No- being world out of No-being things, when he deposited the seed containing within itself the complete seeds of the universe. And to give an illustration of my meaning : the egg of any bird of diversified plumage— the peacock, for example — although itself single, yet includes within itself the many-coloured, multifarious forms of multifarious substances; so, in like manner, did this seed of the world deposited by the No-being God include within itself the multiform, multifarious seeds of the univerise.

74 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

" This seed, then, contained all things that can be named ; najf more, all things that can not be named, as yet hidden in futurity, and to come forth after their kind by accretion, and liy growth, after the manner in which we see the new-born infant acquire his teeth, his flesh, his father's form, and all his under- standing, and all such things that come to the child as it grows up, not apparent in him at the beginning. Now, inasmuch as it is impossible to use the term ' projection ' of the No-being God (in fact, Basilides is opposed to all schemes of creation by means of a 'projection'), for we must not suppose Matter necessary to his operations in the same way as her threads are to the spider, or as timber and metal to man when he sets about any work ; but ' He spake and it was made ' ; and this is what Moses means by his ' Let there be light, and there was light.' Whence, then, was this light ? Moses saith not whence it was, but that it was from the word of the speaker; but neither He that spoke was, neither icas that which was made. The seed of the world was this word that was spoken, 'Let there be light.' And to this the evangelist refers by his ' And that was the true Light which enlighteneth every man coming into the world.' For man draws his beginning out of that seed, and is illuminated thereby." (This " seed," therefore, divided into infinite other seeds, is nothing else than Aristotle's "genus," which is divided into infinite other "species," as " animal," the genus, itself non-existent, is divided into " species," as ox, horse, man, &c.)

" Having, therefore, got this seed for his starting-point, Basilides goes on thus : ' Whatever I speak of as made after this, there is no need of inquiring out of tvhat it was made, seeing that this seed comprehended within itself the principles of the All. Now let us examine what came out of this seed in the first, second, and third place. There was in the seed a Sonsliip, triple, of the same substance with the No-being God, and generated by him. In this triple Sonship one part was subtile, another gross, the third needing purification.* Upon the first projecting (emitting) of the seed, the subtile element disengaged itself, ascending aloft " like a feather or a thought,"

* Corresponding to " Immaterial, Material, and Mixed."

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 75

and arrived at the No-being One. For Him all Nature de-

sireth, by reason of the super-eminence of his beauty and

perfection. The gross part endeavoured to imitate its example,

but was weighed down by its coarser nature, and detained

within the seed. To assist it, therefore, the Sonship equips it

with a wing, such as Plato in his " Phaedrus " wings the soul

withal. Now this wing is the Holy Ghost, which the grosser

part putting on, is both advantaged itself, and advantages the

other. For the wings of a bird are not able to fly if severed

from the bird, neither can the soul fly if separated from her

wings. Such, then, is the relationship borne by the Sonship to

the Holy Ghost, and also by the Holy Ghost to the Sonship.

Soaring aloft, therefore, upon its wings — that is, upon the Holy

Ghost, this Soul Part carried its wings, the Holy Ghost, along

with it up to the No-being God, and the Sensible Sonship, but

was unable to comprehend the latter, because its own nature is

not constituted of the same substance with Him. But in the

same way as dry and pure air is repugnant to the nature of

fishes, so the place, more ineffable than the Ineffable One, and

more lofty than all names that can be named, the seat of the

No-being God and of the Subtile Part, was contrary to the

nature of the Holy Ghost. On this account, the Sonship left

it near to that place which cannot be conceived by mind, nor

described by words, though not altogether abandoned by

himself, but retaining sometliing of his power (or essence), just

as a vessel once filled with a precious perfume ever retains

traces of that perfume, however carefully it may have been

emptied. And this is manifestly like the ointment upon the

head "which ran down to Aaron's beard" — that is, the perfume

of the Sonship, brought down by the Holy Ghost even into the

impurity and degradation of mortality, out of which itself at

the beginning had soared aloft, raised by the Sonship, as it

were, on eagle's wings, being itself fastened upon his back.

For all things struggle upwards from that which is below

towards that which is above, from the " worse towards the

better," whereas nothing of those above in the better place

seeks to descend below.'

"The third part of the Sonship — namely, that requiring

76 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

purification, remained included within the infinite head (or sum) of infinite seeds, both giving and receiving benefit, in the manner hereafter to be explained. After the first and second ascensions of the Sonship, the Holy Ghost, which had been left above, became the 'firmament' between the world and the upper world. For Basilides divides all things that are into two great classes, the ' world ' and the ' upper world ' ; the Spirit, therefore, occupying the interval between the two (namely, the Holy Ghost, which retains the odour of the Son- ship) he terms the ' Boundary Spirit.' Now after this firmament above the world had been constituted, there broke forth out of the Seed of the World the ' Great Archon,' the Head of the World, or beauty, strength, magnitude indissoluble. More inefiable is he than the Inefiable, more powerful than the Powerful, wiser than the Wise, more beautiful than any beauty that can be named. As soon as he was born he soared upwards and reached the firmament, but that was the limit of his flight ; for he knew not of the existence of anything beyond the firmament, and therefore he remained more beautiful, more powerful, more wise than any of the things subjacent, always excepting the Sonship — that is, the Third impurified Person — who still lay enclosed within the immense universal seed. Imagining himself, therefore, to be Lord and Euler and Intelli- gent Architect, he set about the creation of the world. In the first place, not wishing to abide alone, he generated unto him- self a son out of things subjacent (^mundane elements), far wiser and more beautiful than himself, for this son was in truth the Third Person yet left enclosed within the seed. This thing had been predestinated by the No-being God from the beginning ; as soon as he beheld this son he was enamoured of his perfect beauty, and bade him to sit down on his right hand. This they call the ' Ogdoad,' the abode of the Great Archon. The great and wise Demiurgus then made the entire seiherial creation, being inspired and empowered thereto by his own son, so far above himself in wisdom." (This idea is copied from Aristotle's " Entelechia " of the natural organic body ; the active soul in the body being itself wiser, stronger, and better than the body. The theory, therefore, propounded originally by Aristotle con-

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS. 77

cerning the body and the soul, Basilides thus applies to the Great Archon and the Son whom he had created ; for as the Archon creates the Son, so does Aristotle make the soul to be the work and effect of the natural organic body.) "All things, therefore, are ruled by the providence of the Great Archon " (or rather, by the " Entelechia " of himself and son) — " all things, that is to say, which lie helow the moon, and within the ^ther — for the moon is the division between the aether and the air,

" The creation being finished, there arose out of the seed a ' Second Archon,' but greatly inferior to the first, yet similarly ineffable. This (Archon) is designated the ' Hebdomad.' He proceeded to create all things helow the aether of which he is the Demiurgus ; and he, in his turn, generated a son infinitely superior to himself. The intermediate space between the regions Ogdoad and Hebdomad is occupied by the universal seed, the heap of species, the particles whereof are guided by the intelligence implanted in them by the First Creator as to the times, the natures, and the changes in which they have to come forth, and possess no other guide, guardian, or creator.

" The whole creation was in this way completed, of the world and of the things above the world ; but there was yet left within the seed the ' Third Sonship,' who, in his turn, had to be developed, revealed, and to ascend beyond the Boundary Spirit up to the Subtile Sonship and the No-being One. This is the interpretation (meaning) of the Scripture : ' The whole creation groaneth and is in labour, waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God.' These ' sons ' are the Spiritual Men left here below to guide and to perfect the souls that from their nature belong to this place. ' From Adam unto Moses sin reigned ' — that is to say, the Great Archon, who had dominion up to the firmament, and imagined that he alone was God, and that there was none other above him — for all above him was kept in the deepest silence. This is the ' mystery not revealed unto the Fathers ' ; the Great Archou, the Ogdoad, was, as he supposed, the Lord and Euler of the universe. But of the ' interval,' or middle space, the Hebdomad was the ruler ; now the Ogdoad is ineffable, but the Hebomad may be uttered by speech. This ruler of the Hebdomad was He who spake unto Moses, saying,

78 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS.

' T am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and tho Name of God I have not revealed unto them ' — that is. He did not reveal to them the ineifable ruler of the Ogdoad. All the prophets who were before the Saviour's coming spoke through the inspiration of the Second Archon.

" When the time vp^as come for the manifestation of the Sons of God, the Gospel came, penetrating through every power, dominion, and name that can be named, although the Sonship did not come down from his place upon the right hand of the Incomprehensible No-being One. But, like as Indian naphtha kindles at the mere sight of fire a long way off, so do powers fly up out of the seed to the Sonship that is beyond the firma- ment. The son of the Great Archon of the Ogdoad thus receives, like as naphtha catches the distant flame, the ema- nations of the Sonship who is beyond the firmament ; and this last, the Boundary Spirit, serves for the communication of the thoughts from the one to the other.

" The Gospel thus came to the Great Archon through his own son, and he was converted, and troubled, and became wise, learning his own ignorance (or want of knowledge) ; and this is the interpretation of ' The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.' For the Christ, sitting by him, instructed him con- cerning the Ineffable No-being One, concerning the Son who is beyond the firmament, and concerning the creation of the universe. The Great Archon being thus instructed, was filled with fear, and confessed the sin he had committed in magnifying himself ; and this is the meaning of ' I acknowledge my trans- gression and I confess my sin.' When, therefore, the Great Archon was enlightened, every creature of the Ogdoad was likewise enlightened, and then came the time for the enlighten- ment and evangelising of the ruler of the Hebdomad. For this end the son of the Great Archon communicated to the son of the Second Archon the light which he himself had received from above, and he communicated his instruction to his Father, who in like manner was convinced of, and confessed his sin. By this time every creature of the Hebdomad was enlightened, and had the Gospel preached unto them. For in this division (the region below the rether) also, there is an infinite creation

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIE REMAINS. 79

of powers, principalities, and dominions (concerning whom Basilides has a lengthy dissertation ; who moreover in this region places the 365 heavens, and their ruler ABE AS AX, so called because his name contains that sum, for which reason the year consists also of that number of days).

" After all this it was necessary that the Unformedness (d/xop^ta) existiijg in our region — that is, the Sonship still lying enclosed in the mass like an abortion — should be enlightened in the same manner with those aforementioned. The Light therefore passed through the Hebdomad upon the son of the Hebdomad — that is, upon Jesus, the son of Mary. This is ' the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee,' namely, the power of unction, descending from the Supreme through the Demiurgus upon the Son.

" The present constitution of things will last until every particle of the Sonship enveloped in the unformed mass shall be attracted into Jesus, shall be disentangled and sublimated by him, and rendered capable of ascending by itself to the first source of Light, to which it bears a natural affinity.

"In this way the Three Persons of the Sonship being all united once more above the firmament, then mercy shall be shown unto the creation, ' which languishes and groans waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God ' ; for all men belonging to the Sonship shall ascend up unto Him. When this is accomplished. He will bring upon the world a deep ignorance, so that all things here below shall abide in their nature, and desire nothing contrary to their nature. By this means the souls appointed to abide here below will be destitute of even the slightest notion of anything existing above them, lest they should be tormented by the fruitless desire of ascending up into the same ; like as though a fish should desire to pasture with the flocks upon the hills, a wish which, if gratified, would be its destruction. For all things are eternal so long as they continue in their natural place, but become mortal when thej' endeavour to escape beyond it. The same ignorance will envelop the ruler of the Hebdomad , in order that sorrow and grief and confusion may flee away from him ; that he may no longer be troubled with the desire of things above him and contrary to

80 THE GNOSTICS AND THEIK REMAINS.

his nature. This ignorance shall also come over the Great Arclion of the Ogdoad, and over all creatures subject unto him, and for the same reason. This is the ' restoration of all things ; enclosed from the beginning within the seed, and disposed according to its season. This is the Saviour's meaning in ' My hour is not yet come ' ; it is also signified by the Magi be- holding the star, inasmuch as His coming, proclaimed from the beginning, was subject to the disposition of the stars.*

" The Gospel is the Declaration of supramundane things, which the Great Archon knew not of. But when it was told him of the Sonship, of the Boundary Spirit, and of the No-being God, he rejoiced with an exceeding great joy. With respect to the birth of Jesus, all things came to pass as they are written in the Gospels. For He was the firstfriiits of the division of the classes, previously all commingled here below. Now, as the world is distributed into the Ogdoad, the head of the universe, whose chief is the Great Archon, and into the Hebdomad, whose chief is the Demiurgus, chief also of our degree where Frailty (liability to error) subsists, it was necessary that this Confusion should be distributed and set in order by Jesus. That part of him, therefore, which was of the ' Unformedness,' namely, his body suffered what it did suffer and returned again into unformed- ness ; that part which belonged to the Hebdomad, namely, his soul, returned again into the Hebdomad after his resurrection ; the part belonging to the Ogdoad remained with the Great Archon, and the part belonging to the Boundary Spirit was left there in his ascension. But the third Sonship, thus purified in his passage upwards, was reunited to the Blessed Sonship who