tained their christian profession amidst the opposition of the heathens and the obloquy of the orthodox, is certain. But it is now considered equally certain that they believed, some of them, that Jesus Christ was an angelic being of the highest order, who came into our world with only the visionary appearance, not the real body, of a man; and others, that Jesus alone was a mere man, with a human soul, into whom the Christ, a high celestial spirit, descended at his baptism in Jordan. As to the object of our Saviour's mission, they are thought to have been perfectly agreed, that it was, not to satisfy any vindictive justice in Deity, whom they considered infinitely good, but to deliver mankind from the oppressive service of the degenerate gods of this world, and to teach them how to subdue their passions, and approximate the Supreme God, the fountain of purity and bliss. From the long-venerated, but chimerical, philosophy of the Persians, they retained the notion that the material world was formed, not by the Self-Existent, but by the inferior gods, called Eons, whose being was derived through a long and intricate succession, as most of them thought, originally from him'. This led them to regard the God of the Jews, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, as but a secondary being, the principal Maker of this world; and they also concluded that he had apostatized, more or less, from the divine allegiance, inasmuch as he had arrogated to

1 A few of them, perhaps, held two original, self-existent Beings, an evil as well as a good Deity. Such, it is conjectured, was the opinion of the Saturninians, about A. D. 120, and of the Marcionites, about A. D. 140. This is, however, denied in the History of Here tics in Lardner's Works, and also by Beausobre.

himself the honors of worship, and as Christ had been sent to annul his ancient covenant, and to overthrow his institutions. From the same philosophy, they also received the doctrine of the eternity of matter, and, especially, of its inherent, radical depravity. Hence, they in general discarded the hope of the resurrection of the material body, which, in their view, would but perpetuate the bondage and corruption of the soul. With such dislike did most of them regard the body, that they prescribed an excessively rigid discipline, a continual abstinence, in order to thwart all its inclinations, and to weaken, as far as possible, its power over the mind.

Such are the common outlines of their several systems, as laid down by the more judicious of modern historians, who at the same time confess and lament the impossibility of arriving at a satisfactory knowledge of the subject. All the Gnostics were reproached, by their cotemporary orthodox adversaries, with being abandoned to licentiousness: a character which the heathens first bestowed with unsparing liberality, upon the orthodox themselves, and which these, in turn, have as freely transmitted, and doubtless from much the same motives, to the successive orders of hereticsTM.

m The licentiousness, alledged by the ancient orthodox against the Gnostics, is in part denied, and in part admitted, by Mosheim; uniformly mentioned in terms of uncertainty, by Le Clerc; and wholly denied, by Beausobre; as it likewise is, in the History of Heretics in Lardner's Works. The following remark deserves more consideration than, I fear, most readers will allow it: "This is certain, that as bad things were said of the primitive christians, as were ever said of the ancient heretics by the Catholics, [Orthodox.] Modern Reformers have been treated just in the same manner." (Hist. of Heretics, Book i. Sect. 8. Lardner's Works.) Look into Roman Catholic writings, and see all kinds of immoral tenets attributed to Luther, Calvin, and their associates; turn to the Protestant side, and see the

Some of the Gnostics, perhaps some of the earliest, believed in the endless exclusion of a part of mankind from the abodes of celestial light. But among those who arose in Egypt there were many, particularly the Basilidians, the Carpocratians and the Valentinians, who are supposed to have held an eventual restoration, or rather transmigration, of all human souls to a heaven of purity and bliss. But this tenet they appear to have involved in other notions wild and chimerical enough to warrant the suspicion of lunacy, were it not for the antiquity, prevalence, and reputation of that whimsical philosophy from which they were derived.

About

A. D. 120.

X. The Basilidians and Carpocratians, it is said, believed that such souls as here follow the instructions of our Saviour, will, at death, ascend immediately to the happy mansions above; while, on the contrary, such as neglect and disobey, will be condemned to pass into other bodies, either of men or brutes, until by their purification they shall be fitted to share the joys of the incorporeal blest; and so, all will finally be saved.

The Basilidians were the followers of Basilides, a Gnostic christian and Egyptian philosopher, who flour

charge retorted with, at least, equal exaggeration; hear the mutual criminations of our modern sects, who accuse each other of principles of conduct which they never thought of;-and then judge how much credit should be given to ancient calumnies of the same sort! It is a curious circumstance that Mosheim, honored and admired, and standing on high ground in a national church, had never, himself, encountered the slander of bigotry; while Le Clerc, an odious Arminian from Geneva, and Beausobre, a Protestant refugee from France, had ample experience of its malignity and falsehood. The Unitarian Lardner was, in his own country, a heretic of the most obnoxious kind.

ished at Alexandria in the early part of the second century, and died there between the years 130 and 140. Though he believed in one self-existent, supreme, and infinitely glorious God, yet he also held that depraved matter had been, in one state or another, coeval with him. In the past ages of eternity, the deity produced from himself certain Eons, who, in their turn, begat others, but of a rank somewhat inferior, and of a lower station; and from these again proceeded a species still less exalted; and so on in succession, till the celestial hierarchy extended from the highest heaven down to the vicinity of chaotic matter. The lowest race of Eons, whose station was the nethermost heaven, undertook, at length, to reduce the immense material mass below them from its pristine state of disorder; and having formed it into a world, and made man with a body' and a material soul, the Deity, approving their work, gave the creature a rational mind, and thus completed the undertaking. He then allowed these Eons to divide among themselves the government of the world they had formed. But they, swerving by degrees from their allegiance, arrogated at length divine honors from their creatures, grew ambitious of enlarging, each one, his dominion over the territory of the others, and for this purpose embroiled mankind in mutual wars, till the world became full of wretchedness and crime. Touched with compassion for the human race, God sent his Son, the first-begotten and noblest of all the Eons, to take up his abode in the man Jesus; and through him to proclaim the supreme, but forgotten, Deity, teach mankind to abjure the authority of their tyrannical gods, espe

cially of the God of the Jews; and to instruct them how to subdue their own sinful propensities, by mortifying their bodies, as well as by governing their passions. The God of the Jews, alarmed for his dominion, excited the people to apprehend and crucify Jesus; but the Christ, the celestial Eon, had left his mortal abode before the suffering man was nailed to the cross.

Basilides taught that God is perfectly good, or benevolent, in the real sense of those words; but that he inflicts the proper punishment for every wilful transgression, whether of saint or sinner. Reformation and improvement are the grand objects, as he appears to have held, of all punishment, and of all God's dealings with mankind. Though he treated the Old Testament with respect, as the revelation of that dignified Being who governed the Jews, he did not think it inspired by the supreme God; and he is accused of having also rejected some parts of the New Testament; which, though possibly a fact", cannot be satisfactorily proved. He wrote a Commentary, in twenty four books, on the Gospels, which was soon answered by Agrippa Castor, a cotempory orthodox writer.

Basilides is thought to have been a grave and pious man, but bewildered by the fabulous theology of the East. He had a son, named Isidore, who wrote some books, long since lost, in illustration of their religious sentiments. His sect, though often assailed, and constantly opposed, both by the orthodox and the heathens,

n Mosheim thinks it credible; Beausobre sees no proof of it; andin the History of Heretics in Lardner, it is disputed. Le Clerc says nothing about it.