GNOSTICS rd's sapper was to them of less impor- only the sign of a material feast, ,,.i tli.- reality f which their views of the na-
- Christ threw doubt. Some of them
kept the feast days of the church, and the fol- lowers of Carpocrates allowed the images both of Jesus and the saints. use of While the idea of the church was to a great extent discarded, much of its ritual and its splendor was retained. 7. In practical morals two ten- i are to be observed in the Gnostic a. On one side is the ascetic tendency, whi.-h seeks a complete emancipation from matter and from bodily passion, as the seat of sin; on the other side the licentious tendency, whk-h plunges into excess, on the plea that sensual passion is most surely overcome by satiety. Many of the charges brought against this latter class of Gnostics are, however, to be taken with large abatement. There is no evidence that their average morality was be- low that of the orthodox Christians, or that the ascetic tendency was carried to such ex- tremes among them as among the Jewish Es- senes or the later Christian hermits. Gnosti- cism, in the 2d century at least, was rather a speculative than a practical heresy, a sys- tem of intellectual vagaries rather than of mor- al corruptions. In speaking of the principal Gnostic teachers, the geographical division may be adopted as most convenient, if not most philosophical. Of the precursors of Gnos- ticism before the formation of its principal schools are mentioned: Simon Magus, whose authentic history is related in the Acts, but of whom legends abound, and after whom the sect of the Siraonians was named; Menander, said to have been a disciple of Simon ; Corin- th us, who considered Judaism a preparation for Christianity; Nicolaus, of whom nothing is known except that he is reckoned as the founder of the sect of the Nicolaitans, noted for thoir lax morality, and mentioned in the Apocalypse. Of the Syrian school, the chief characteristic of which is dualism, the princi- pal teachers were: 1. Saturninus, a follower lander, who lived at Antioch about the year 125, in the reign of Hadrian. He main- tained that the lowest coon was formed from the spirits of the seven planets; that the evil spirit formed a race of hylic men to counteract the race formed by this aeon ; and that Christ was the on Nous in a visible but not corporeal body. His school, never very numerous, was confined to the neighborhood of Antioch, and was hardly known in the succeeding century. 2. Bardesanes, who flourished at Edessa in the latter half of the 2d century. (See BARDE- SAHKS.) 8. Tatian, who lived in the 2d century, and is commonly reckoned among the Christian apologists. (See TATIAN.) In the Egyptian characterized by the emanation theory, rere: i. IJasili.K-s. lm in Alexandria about the year 120, whose follower*, the Badlidiana, existed as late as the 4th century. (See BASILIDES.) 2. Valentinus an Alexandrian Jew, who taught in Eome about the middle of the 2d century, and died in Cyprus about the year 1GO. His system of a3ons is divided into three series of 15 pairs, an ogdoad, a decad, and a dodecad. " male and female. , His They are threefold Christ " dif- fers from that of Basilides. His elaboration of Gnostic ideas was more complete and inge- nious than that of any other writer, and his influence was longer and wider in its extent. J. Matter numbers seven distinguished names among the successors of Valentinus, five of whom founded schools; these are Secundus, Ptolemy, Marcus, Colarbasus, Heracleon, The- odotus, and Alexander. 3. The Ophites, or Naasenes, a powerful sect, yet without any distinguished name among their teachers, who traced their doctrine to James, the brother of the Lord, and existed at a later period than the other Gnostic sects. As their name im- plies, the serpent was for them a sacred em- blem. They regarded the fall of man as a pro- gress rather than as a loss, named the Jewish Jehovah " Jaldabaoth," or the God of chaos, preferred Judas to the other disciples, affirm- ing that he betrayed Christ to destroy the kingdom of God's enemy, and denied that the real Christ was ever crucified. The Sethites and Cainites were branches of this sect. The moral character of the Ophites was bad, and the sect came not only under the constant re- buke of the church teachers, but under the im- perial ban. Of the Gnostics of Asia Minor, the one eminent name is that of Marcion, an austere moralist and a vigorous reasoner. Ho taught at Kome about the middle of the 2d century. His system is characterized by the constant antithesis between Christianity and Judaism, by a rejection of the Old Testament and of all apostolic authority except that of Paul, and by a rigid asceticism. His followers were numerous even to the time of Moham- med. Of the Gnostics not localized, but most- ly related by their doctrines to the Gnostics of Egypt, may be mentioned the schools of Car- pocrates and his son Epiphanes, the Antitacts, the Bortonians, the Phibionites, the Archon- tics, the Adamites, and the Prodicians. Her- mogenes of Carthage is also by some regarded as a Gnostic teacher. While the particular sect and schools of the Gnostics had disappeared almost wholly in the 6th century, their opin- ions survived to a much later age, seriously affecting not only the orthodox faith, but ap- pearing in many of the famous and troublesome heresies. Their earlier influence is to be no- ticed in the views of the Ebionites and the Do- cetfB, in the speculations of the Clementine Ho- milies, in the radical theories of Montanism, in the fantasies of the New Platonists, and above all in the powerful and wide-spread Manichsean heresy. Some have also endeavored to find traces of Gnosticism in the Sabellian, Arian, and Pelagian heresies. In the 7th century their doctrines were repeated by the Pauli- cians, in the 9th by the Athinganians or " chil-
