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posing, that they might have pretended to be, in some sort, followers of Christ, while they rejected Jesus as a divine teacher, and even proceeded to the extravagance, mentioned by Origen, of pronouncing curses on his name.* Thus in our own day, among the theologians of Germany, we may find speculations concerning an abstract, an ideal, or a symbolical Christ, who is an object of faith, while the history of Jesus is regarded as fabulous.

FROM what has been said it may appear, that sects and individuals who are not to be considered as Christians have been erroneously reckoned among the Gnostics. Nor is their existence difficult to be accounted for. Christianity soon became an object of universal attention. It was a new phenomenon in the intellectual world. A power, unknown before,

* This solution of the disagreement between Origen and Irenæus implies the incorrectness of the account of the latter writer (already quoted, p. 230), that the Ophians affirmed that Jesus. after his resurrection taught, for eighteen months, the mysteries of their doctrines to those who were capable of receiving them. But, beside the contradiction to Origen, the whole account of Irenæus (Lib. I. c. 30. §§ 12, 13, 14. pp. 111, 112.) respecting the agency of Christ and of Jesus in the system of the Ophians is too obscure and incongruous to be entitled to much consideration.

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was in action, and spreading its influence far beyond the sphere to which it might seem to be confined. Our religion essentially affected the heathen philosophy contemporary with it, and introduced into it conceptions such as had not been previously entertained. The doctrines of our faith were, undoubtedly, more or less known to many, who had not studied them in the Gospels, nor were acquainted with its evidences as a revelation from God. Though not received by such as of divine authority, and but imperfectly understood, they gave a new impulse to thought. Men's minds were thrown into a state of effervescence, new affinities operated, and new combinations of opinion were formed. There were, doubtless, those whose vanity prompted them to profess an acquaintance with the new barbaric philosophy, as they deemed it, and to represent themselves as having exercised a critical and discriminating judgment upon it, and as having discovered in it certain important views, and certain truths not before developed. In some of those affected by our religion, their imperfect and heartless knowledge of it would be rather destructive than renovating, breaking down all barriers o thought, and opening the way for wild specula tions. Hence, as we may easily believe, new

systems of opinion sprung up, not Christian, but deriving some characteristic peculiarities from Christianity; — the systems held by those whom we have called pseudo-Christians.

But how, it may be asked, came the pseudoChristians to be confounded with Christian heretics? Various considerations afford an answer to this question. As I have remarked, no well-defined boundary was apparent between the two classes. They passed insensibly into each other. In the reliance of the Gnostics upon the revelations of their own spiritual nature we may perceive a tendency to infidelity. It was an error which would lead many to undervalue, and some to reject, the authority of Christ. The pseudo-Christians were reckoned among the Gnostics, because many of them held Gnostic opinions; and such opinions were attributed even to those, the Carpocratians, by whom they were not held. Another cause of this confusion may be found in the fact, that the Heathens would naturally blend together in one general class all those who, breaking away from the old forms of philosophy, were evidently involved in the new movement in the intellectual world, produced by Christianity. The enemies of our religion charged upon Christians

what might be truly or falsely said of such sectaries as we have been considering. And, on the other hand, the catholic Christians, regarding the Gnostics as not true believers, as not belonging to the Christian body, were not careful to discriminate between them and those who, though corresponding with them in many respects, had yet no title to the Christian name. Hence it was, we may conceive, that the Gnostics were classed with individuals, whose doctrines and whose lives many of them regarded with as strong disapprobation as did the catholic Christians.

In the preceding chapters we have taken a general view of the Gnostics and of their relation to the catholic Christians. We have traced their external history, and attended to the respective characters of those writers from whom our knowledge of them is derived. We have considered their morals, an essential point in determining how far they may be regarded as sincere though erroneous believers; and we have discriminated them from sectaries with whom they have been confounded, who, though borrowing some conceptions from Christianity, were not Christians.

It has been suggested, likewise, that the

occasion of Gnosticism was to be found in the aversion of the Gentiles to Judaism, in the form in which it was presented to their minds; and to this subject we will next attend.

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