the questioning of Socrates; "By Jupiter, you have made me say more than I had in me." Nor has this too great ingenuity of explanation

phlegm, and sometimes with heartless flippancy, doctrines the most disastrous to faith and morals. These writings are distinguished, not so much by a want of reasoning, or an evident incapacity of reasoning, as by an apparent insensibility to its necessity or use. Every thing is assumed. The most extravagant and most pernicious theories are put forward, as if they consisted of self-evident propositions. Yet, when the metaphysician or theologist of the day brings out his new system, resting on no truths or facts, but spun from his own brain, his disciples (les plus sots qui toujours admirent un sot) applaud the rigid thought and profound speculations of their master; while more intelligent readers, unaccustomed to this style of discussion without explanation or argument, are at first perplexed by a phenomenon which they cannot readily understand. These works, numerous as they are, do not belong to the literature of the world. They form a literature, if it may be so called, immiscible with any other. The speculations they contain have no alliance with those truths which human wisdom has established, or which God has revealed to us. Tenneman, the German historian of philosophy, likened the new school of German metaphysicians, as it existed in his time, to the later Platonists. Baur finds a strong resemblance between those of our day and the Gnostics. These modern metaphysicians do, in truth, belong to the age of the later Platonists and Gnostics. But they resemble them not so much through a correspondence of doctrines, as in their mystical and barbarous obscurity, in their perversion and fabrication of language, in their arrogant claims, in their contempt for the exercise of the understanding in the investigation and establishment of truth, and in their pretending to some other foundation than reason, and the revelation of God, on which to rest our highest knowledge.

been confined to those who have formed an over-estimate of the spiritual acquirements of the Gnostics. In the developement of their opinions, it is not uncommon to find a striking contrast between the scanty or worthless materials that antiquity has left us, and the long and ready detail of a modern expositor, defining the particulars, and tracing the history, of a system. When we look for the proof of what is affirmed, we find, perhaps, straggling authorities of doubtful credit, or uncertain application; supposed analogies with opinions less understood than those of the Gnostics, to establish which, the mere shadows of meaning are to be tracked through the obscurity of Eastern theology, or some imaginary scheme of Egyptian superstition; etymological conjectures; and explanations of allegories and symbols, to which the ingenuity of the writer may give a glimmering of probability, while his page is open before us. In the words of Tertullian, late quæruntur incerta, latius disputantur præsumpta; "there is a wide search after uncertainties, and a wider discussion of assumptions." At the same time, facts that lie most open to view have been disregarded, or misrepresented, or but partially stated. In consequence, however, of all the attention which has

been given to the subject, the character of the Gnostics may undoubtedly be better understood at the present day than it formerly has been. The extravagant over-estimate of them, which appears in some modern writers, is, in part, a reaction produced by the extravagant depreciation of them which preceded it. The crude accounts of the later, as well as earlier, fathers have formerly been received without discrimination, and without any attempt to disengage the truth from the language of controversy, or from the mass of falsehood, in which it was enveloped, and consequently without any exercise of judgment on the respective credibility of the authorities adduced. The charges made against them by the later, as well as earlier, fathers, whether probable or not, have been repeated without examination by theological bigotry, which, connecting with the name of heretic the ideas of folly, immorality, and impiety, has given itself full scope in ascribing these bad qualities to the Gnostics. Even more sober and judicious writers have spoken of their systems, as if they had just appeared, instead of having been produced many centuries ago; and have rather compared them with an abstract standard of what they themselves deemed sound philosophy, than viewed

them relatively to the erroneous conceptions of ancient times. Their proper rank has not been assigned them among the other forms of metaphysical and religious belief, equally false and irrational, which have been, or still are, extensively received. But the Gnostics were neither prodigies of wisdom nor folly. There was nothing peculiar in the character of their minds to distinguish them from numerous theorists of their own and other times. With the exception of the Marcionites, they belonged to the large class of the professors of hidden but intuitive wisdom, who exhibit to the ignorant, bits of colored glass, with the air of men displaying inestimable jewels. The most eminent among them were probably far inferior to some of their opponents, to such men as Tertullian and Origen, in vigor and clearness of intellect, and in that intense conviction of the truths of religion, which at once implies a sound judgment and tends to perfect it; but I do not know that they would appear to much disadvantage, if brought into comparison with the later Platonists of the third and fourth centuries.*

Tertullian commences his treatise "Against the Valentinians" with a remarkable passage, which, though of some length, it may be worth while to quote. It forms an amusing contrast with that before given from a modern author, (p. 40,)

THE Gnostics and Ebionites, as has been remarked, were the principal heretics of the first two centuries. They were both divided from the communion of catholic Christians. The Ebionites, belonging to what, in their view,

and is, I doubt not, somewhat less distant from the truth. The representation of Tertullian carries with it a degree of intrinsic probability, whatever allowance is to be made for the roughness of his language. He says;

"The Valentinians, who are the most numerous body among the heretics, because they consist, in great part, of apostates, and are given to fables, and in fear of no discipline, care about nothing more than to conceal what they teach, if men can be said to teach what they conceal. Secrecy is made a matter of conscience. Confusion is taught under the name of religion. In those Eleusinian mysteries, which are a branch of the Attic superstition, what is kept secret is shameful. So the access is made difficult, the initiation is long, a seal is put on the lips; a discipline of five years is required, that suspense may build up a high opinion of what is to be known, and its grandeur, when revealed, may appear proportional to the curiosity excited. Then follows the obligation of silence. What has been so tardily attained must be carefully guarded. the initiated, after the sealing of their lips, the whole divinity revealed in the sanctuary is an obscene image. But an allegory, holding forth the venerable name of Nature, is forced to sanction the figure; obscuring the sacrilege, and excusing the infamy by false similitudes. In like manner, the heretics, of whom we speak, dressing up the idlest and vilest fictions with holy names, and titles, and arguments, drawn from true religion, the divine love and abundance [the abundance in the Scriptures] affording ready opportunity, since, from much, much may be cut away, have, for a lure, made Eleusinian mysteries of their own, sacred only as buried in silence, celestial through tacitur

Yet, after all the longings of