literature, in which most of these elements had found a place, was diffused among the educated classes in all those countries in which Gnosticism flourished, and might have been the mediating agenc3' through which the mind of the East was brouglit into communication with that of the West. From the heterogeneous com- mingling of such diverse S3'stems, and especially from their contact with the 3'oung energies of Christianit3', the Gnostic spirit might easily draw forth such mate- rials as suited its purpose. The sources of Gnosticism, however, like those of tlie Nile, are to a great extent concealed, and those who imagine the3' have discover- ed its principal head not unfrequently learn that an- other remains far be3'ond. As its friends boasted, there were secret agencies b3' which truth was con- ve3ed to the elect race under s3nnbols and an outward letter which onh' the3' could understand. (See Bax- mann, in the Anier. Theol. Revietu for 1862, p. 066-76).
III. Classification. — It has been found verv difficult to arrange the several Gnostic sects according to an3' principle of classification. The3' have been grouped together b3' different writers according to their ori- gin, their geographical position, and their speculative views. Neander Qlist. Christ. Religion, i, 379-86) di- vides them into Judaizing and anti-Judaizing Gnos- tics, according to their agreement or opposition to an- cient Judaism. Gieseler {Eccl. Hist. vol. i, § 44) ar- ranges them according to their geographical order, as Alexandrian. S3'riac, and miscellaneous. Hase {IJist. Ckr. Ch. § 76) makes four classes, S3'rian, Hellenistic, Judaizing, and speciall3' Christian. Similar to this is Matter's division into those of S3'ria, Asia Minor, Eg3'pt, and the rest of the Roman world (Hist. crit. du Gnost.). Baur {Ckr. Gnosis, 1835) arranges the several sects into three principal classes, according to their re- lation to the three earlier religions with which they came in coi.tact : 1. Those who combined Christianity with Judaism and heathenism ; 2. Those who entireh-- separated it from them, and opposed it to them ; and, 3. Those who identified it with Judaism, but opposed it to heathenism. This ingenious, and, in manv respects, satisfactorv division, fails to Ijring out the historical progress and internal development of the Gnostic sys- tems, and offers no suitable place for Manichseism. It has, however, found much favor on account of its sim- plicit3', and has been adopted with some modifications by Niedner, Marheineke ( Weltalter, th. ii, p. 240), Ten- nemann (^.Vanual of the Hist, of Phil. § 200), and oth- ers. Dr. Schaff proposes a classification, according to an ethical point of view, into the speculative and the- osophic, the practical and ascetic, and the Antinomim and libertine (///s^ of the Ckr. Ch. i, 234). It is evi- dent that no classification can combine together a chronological, local, and logical distribution, and hence we shall probabl3' gain something by presenting these separately.
\y. History.- — In attempting to give a Iiistorical outline of the course of Gnosticism, our object is not so much to present particular details of the several schools, since these will be found, as far as possible, under their several heads in this work, but to indicate in general the order and position of each. Lipsius, in a recent work (^Gnosticism, its Essence, Origin, and De- velopment, I860), endeavors to show that this course of developnient was a curve which commenced with only a slight departure from orthodoxy, and, after diverg- ing more and more from it, finally comes back again graduallv to the true path. Another writer (Hilgen- feld) has attempted a distinct definition of the three stadia of this development. It is difficult to discover in the actual history the regularity of departive and return implied in such a figure, and 3'et we may derive from it a correct notion of the general direction. In the first stadiuni we liave the Judaizing Gnostics, and then the several classes who, in their opposition to Ju- daism, deify nearlv all the godless characters of the Old Testament. In the second we have not merely
GNOSTICISM
893
GNOSTICISM
Old-Testament history, but Greek philosophy, a con- tempt of the common faith, the opposition of the psy- chic and pneumatic natures, and mythical personili- cations of speculative ideas. In the third and last stadium this opposition between the pneumatic and psychic natures begins to be modified, and finally, un- der the Marcionites, the Gnostic speculation approxi- mates very nearly that of the more liberal Catholic teachers. It is in this last stadium that we find the greatest difficulty in seeing how the curve approxi- mates with much uniformitj' the orthodox highwa}', for some classes of the later Marcionites, and, above all, the Manichees, seem rather to have been the extreme consummation of Gnosticism.
As there were strong tendencies towards Gnosticism both in Judaism and heathenism, we might reasonably infer that the Gnostics must have been powerfully at- tracted by Christianity. It was, however, more consist- ent with the essential spirit of that movement to attempt to mould the new system to its fancy than to submit with docility to the exclusive authority of the Gospel. Among the remnants of Oriental tribes in Samaria we are not surprised to find such a man as Simon, who succeeded in making the multitude believe that he was the great power of God. It is said that he called him- self the creative world-spirit, and his female compan- ion the receptive world-soul. We have here a like- ness of the Gnostic doctrine of £eons and syzigies. In the tradition of the subsequent Church, this half-myth- ical personage became the patriarch of all heretics, but especially of heathen Gnostics (Irenseus, Adv. hcer. lib. i, c. xxvii, § 4 ; Hippol. i, G"2 sq.). During the twentj' years which intervened between the first Christian Pentecost and the later epistles of Paul, we know that theosophic speculations were everywhere prevalent in Syria and Asia Jlinor, and that these were strangclj^ mingled with Christian doctrines. Great freedom was allowed to religious thought, even among the early Christians, as long as the moral and religious life of the people was not perverted. But Paul very soon discovered dangerous tendencies in the churches which he had recently established in Asia Minor. Josephus tells us that Alexander the Great had sent into the provinces of Lydia and Phrygia 2000 Mesopotamian and Babylonian Jews to garrison the disaflfected towns tiiere, and we are informed that the inhabitants of that region have always since been prone to mystical and Oriental superstitions (Alford, How to tise the Epistles, Epistle to the Colossians, Sunday Mag. 18G7, p. 829). Tiie errors which he reproved at Colossre were doubt- less a curious commixture of Jewish and heathen speculations. The ancient historian Hegesippus in- forms us (Euseb. Ecd. Hist, iii, 32) that tlie lieretical gnosis did not make its appearance with an imcovered head until after the death of the apostles, but that it previously worked in secret. After all the conten- tions of various writers on the question how far this error prevailed in apostolic times, there is a general agreement that, while most of the heresies of that pe- riod were Judaistic, there was an obvious diflPerence between those reproved in the Galatian churches and those noticed in the epistles to the Colossians and Tim- otliy. The latter are treated much more mildlj^, and we readily perceive that they must have been much less developed and less subversive of the Christian system. They are express!}' called (1 Tiui.vi. 20) a false gnosis, and were characterized liy cmiity sounds without sense and s\ibtle oppositions to the truth, a depreciation of the bodj-, and a worship of angels (Col. ii, 18, 23), and interminable genenlogies and myths (1 Tim. i, 4). These seem more akin to Jewish than to heathen speculations, and imply not the completed Gnosticism of the second centur}^ Init the manifest germs of Docetic emanations and Gnostic dualism. Irenreus, on the authority of Polycarp, relates (^Adv. har. i, 2G) that Jolm was acquainted with Cerinthus, and wrote the fourth gospel to refute his errors. Both