(0) Hasiudka an<l the Basilidiana. Basilides, whose work and system precciled that of \'nlentinnB, l»oth ot Alexandria and Konie, Is named by nunuTous writers — Epiphanius. Jerome (de Virit III. ch. xxl.), Hippolytus (vli. b), and Eusel)ius ilJE iv. 7) who places his pori<xl In the days of Hadrian (117-138) and speaks with intense abhorrence of his Impieties and his invetitions and aHccticiHin. Me does not refer to his doctrine. Hii'puIytussjH'aks of tht- claim mode by the followers of Ha.'iilldes that he hwl rceeiverl sperial indtniciions from Matthiits, one of the disriplcs of our Lord (Ac IM). Whether Uiero may or may not be any tnith In this report, at any Ate it civex early antiquity to their father and fnundor. Epiphanuis (l/trr. xxiil. 1 7, xxlv. 1) nttribntcs to B. a p»Ti«K! of activity in Antioch Iwfore his appeamm-e In Alexandria or Rome. If Bonilldes <niot4.*d from the Fourth <Jo«i|m-I. iho origin of that precious dtxrunient is tlirnvvn Iwick to tht* parlieht duvs of the century, and, as has alruafly l*on urged, into tln> lifetime of ttnapodtJa. Now It is rery probable that llipi>olytus, in writ-
ing his great book {liff. Ilcer. viL 22). had the work of Basilides open beiure him, and that he referred to the master and to his Bciiool by his accustomed method of citation, ^r.^i for the former, while he used ^n'*, or tutr' mureCt or \iyot/^i for the latter. If the whole of ttiis passage is read (see Enj^. tr. in A.y. JAb.), little doubt can remain in any candid mind that Hippolytus was quoting two passages as cited by Basilides himself from Jn 1" and 2'*. (See also Matthew Arnold, God and the BibU, p. 208 ; Mangold-Bleek, KinUitung, 205 ; Watkins, Jiamp. Lecturer, p. 305).
(7) The Oriental Gnostics, Ophites, Naossencs, PeraUe (Bun- sen's Uippolylux and his Age, see Introd. to St. John, xli. 11, by Reynolds), made, according to Hipjiolytus, abundant use of the Fourth CJospel. We cannot depend on his citations as repre- senting the verbal use of the Uospel made by any spccifio section or leader of these extreme dualists. So great was their antagonism to the OT that they took the verj' name of the serpent, nahash (Heb.) or opkis (Greek), as their ideal cf inti:;lligence and emancipation. What recent investigation has shown is, not that we must carry down the Pastoml Epistles or Colosaians or the Fourth Gospel till after the days of Marcion for proof of the prevalence of these dualistic ideas, but that ideas of the kind were prevalent as early as the activity of St. Paul, who combated them at Corinth and Ephesus, and that the author of the Apoc. encountered them at Thyatira and elsewhere in Asia. Oodet has treated the ' Christ j>arty ' in the Corinthian Church as those who sharply separated between 'Jeitus' and * the Christ* — who could accept the heavenly Christ, but repudiate the genuine incarnation, crucifixion, or resurrection ; who could even anathematize Jesus, and claim special knowledge of, and union with, the Christ. The exist- ence of such a party reveals the presence of these Gnostic tendencies in the middle of the 1st century. Consequently, we have no occasion to wait till the middle or end of the cen- tury to find the occasion for the protest against dualism die- coverable in tJie Fourth Gospel.
There is one exception to the uniform result of these researches into the religious ideaa of the century. A shadowy sect or people, called by Epipiianius'AXovot [i.e. persons destitute of sound sense], I{(pr. II. i. 57, had manifested some antago- nism to the Lo^os- Gospel. Epiph. is amused with the pun wliich he has perpetrat<;d to tiieir discredit, and hopes that it will stick to tliera. Tlie objections which they raised were not of a philosophical or relijrious cltaracter, but had to do witli chronological dilliculties which the numlier ot passovers su*rgests, the close association in wliich the highest dignity of Christ is placed witli His presence at a wedding feast, and, further, the absurd statement tliat the Gospel had been pro- duced, not by the disciple whom Jesus loved, but by Ccrijithns. Tradition certainly has matle .loiin and Cerinthus contemporary, and this tradition is confirmed by the supposition of these 'stupid' people, that the Gospel had been \\Titten by CenntiiiLs. The Wews of Cerinthus leaned towards Ebionitism ; the Avhole teaching of the Fourth Gospel is that the Christ came doA\Ti from heaven.
It is with anmzement we read in Reuss, History of NT^ p. 233, *The unspeakable pains tliat haa been taken to collect external evidence only shows that tliere is none in the proper sense of the term.* We do not wish to accept evidence that would not be accepted elsewhere, tut the proofs of the exist- ence of the Fourth Gospel seem as cogent lus those that are advanced for any books of the NT, to say nothing of the most celebrated patristic or classical ma-sterpieces.
Our conclusion ia that we discern the first indi- cations of its appearance in the wide diHusion of Johannine ideas in the epistles of Barnabas and Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp, the Epistle to Diognctus, and the Diffach^. ^^ e have pseudepi- praphica! literature like the Test, of XII Patriarclis ami the Clementini's, early heretics and dualists like Ita-silides and Valentinus ouoting from it« pages and falsely utilizing its autliority. Nay, we actually lind some of them commenting at length upon considerable portions of the Gospel. There is not onlj' abundance of such evidence outside the pale of the Church, biit the cclebratetl Christian philosopher, .lu*>tin Martyr, in t^uotini; from 'The NteinoifH of the Apo?*tles and those tlmt followed them,' has itrc«i»rved a largo number of the H\to- thegms of Jchuh ; und that these muHt have beeo