was the privileged race of the Jews, kept aloof from the Gentile converts; and, among the Gnostics, the Marcionites formed separate churches of their own.* The theosophic Gnostics, it is probable, likewise had their separate religious assemblies, unless they were prevented by the smallness of their numbers, or by what they regarded as a philosophical indiffer nity alone. If you inquire of them in good faith, they compose their countenances, and raise their eyebrows, and say, 'It is a high matter.' If you question them subtilely, they prevaricate and assert the common faith in ambiguous language. If you show that you understand them, they deny their doctrines. If you come to close conflict, they put on an appearance of foolish simplicity when defeated. They do not commit themselves to their own disciples before they have secured them. They have the art of persuading before they teach. But truth persuades by teaching; it does not teach by persuasion. "So we are regarded as simple by them, simple only, not wise; as if wisdom must be disjoined from simplicity, the Lord having united them." The text of this passage of Tertullian appears to be best given by Rigault (p. 250 of Le Prieur's edition). But, as regards a few words to which I cannot assign a probable meaning, I have rendered them, as perhaps they may be amended by conjecture, thus; "Sed naturæ venerandum nomen allegorica dispositio prætendens, patrocinio coactæ [ƒ. coacta] figuræ, sacrilegium obscurat, et convicium falsi [f. falsis] simulacris excusat." "facili charitati ex [f. charitatis et] divinæ copiæ occasione, quia de multis multa succedere est [f. succidere vel succœdere conject. Rigalt.]." * Tertullian. Advers. Marcion. Lib. IV. c. 5. pp. 415, 416. ence to outward forms of religion. Tertullian, however, says generally of the heretics, that, "for the most part, they have no churches; motherless, without a settled habitation, bereaved of faith, outcasts, they wander about without a home.* An open separation between the Gnostics and the catholic Christians, was produced, on the one hand, by the pride of the Gnostics in their peculiar opinions, and by their regarding themselves as the only spiritual believers, and all beside as lying in darkness; and, on the other hand, by the strong dislike which the great body of Christians entertained for their doctrines and pretensions, and by the brief profession of faith (the origin of what was afterward called "The Apostles' Creed") required of a catechumen, after passing his noviciate, before admission to the communion. The Gnostics, however, sometimes represented their exclusion from the church as unjust. Irenæus says of the Valentinians; "For the sake of making converts of those of the church, they address discourses to the multitude, by which they delude and entice the more simple, imitating our modes of expression. to induce them to become more frequent hear * De Præscript. Hæretic. c. 42. p. 218, ers, and complaining to them of us, that, when they think as we do, say the same things and hold the same doctrine, we abstain without reason from their communion, and call them heretics." * Till toward the middle of the third century, when the heretics were spoken of in general terms, the Gnostics alone were for the most part intended. Thus, for example, Clement of Alexandria sets forth his design to "show to all the heretics, that there is one God and Lord omnipotent clearly proclaimed by the Law and the Prophets, in connexion with the blessed Gospel;"† a proposition requiring to be proved only against the Gnostics. So also Irenæus, in the Preface to his fourth book, disregarding his own previous mention of the Ebionites, speaks of all heretics as "teaching blasphemy against our Maker and Preserver." t BUT, in considering the subject of the early heretics, it is to be remarked, that among the catholic Christians, their contemporaries, there was great freedom of speculation, and great di * Cont. Hæres. Lib. III. c. 15. § 2. p. 203. versity of opinion, till after the time of Origen. Probably no standard of orthodoxy was generally received, much more comprehensive than what has been called the Apostles' Creed; and the opinions of no individual writer were conformable to any of the standards which have been since established. In comparing Tertullian with Origen, the one, the most eminent defender of the common faith among the Greeks, and the other among the Latins, and both, after their death, reputed as heretics, we find in them not only a wholly different cast of mind and temper, but speculations at once very remote from what is the general belief of Christians at the present day, and diverse from, and opposite to, one another. The author of the Clementine Homilies seems, in ancient times, to have escaped the imputation of being a heretic; yet, among other doctrines, widely different from the more common faith, he brought forward a theory, to be elsewhere noticed, respecting the Jewish Law and the Old Testament, in opposition to the Gnostics, which approached little nearer than their own to the opinions afterwards established. Tertullian wrote warmly against Hermogenes, who maintained that evil had its origin in eternal and unoriginated matter. Yet Hermogenes does not appear to have been separate from the communion of the catholic church; and probably not a few other catholic Christians held, in common with him, a doctrine so prevalent in Pagan philosophy. It may be observed, that Hermogenes gave his name to no sect, which seems to show, that there was nothing extraordinary in his opinions being held by a Christian. Tertullian also wrote against Praxeas, who opposed the speculations which had been introduced concerning the proper personality of the Logos. His zeal was inflamed by the circumstance, that Praxeas had been an opponent of the Montanists, of which sect Tertullian had become a member. But he tells us, that the greater part of Christians, "the simple, not to say the unwise and ignorant," favored the opinions of Praxeas.* And, to mention but one other example, there is no ground for supposing, that Tertullian himself, after becoming a Montanist, was rejected from the communion of the catholic church; though it is true, that the Montanists were soon regarded as a heresy separated from it. The state of Christians, then, during the second century, presents a very remarkable ap * Advers. Praxeam, c. 3. p. 502. |