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In his humble dwelling of Mananalis, Constantine entertained a deacon, who returned from Syrian captivity, and received the inestimable gift of the New Testament, which was already concealed from the vulgar by the prudence of the Greek, and perhaps of the Gnostic, clergy.
This translation of the ancient Gnôstic work, called by Schmidt, the Untitled Apocalypse, is based chiefly on Amélineau's French version of the superior MS. of the Codex Brucianus, now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
We are really reaping the results of those conflicts conflicts with bigoted Jewish sects; conflicts with the high priests of paganism, with Greek philosophers, with Gnostic Manichaean illuminati; with the symbolists, soothsayers, astrologers, magicians, which mystic superstition conjured up among degenerate people.
The apocalyptic enthusiasm changed little by little into neo-platonic mysticism, which theology thrust further into the background. It feared the excesses of the imagination which was supplanting faith and creating gnostic extravagances. But it had to sign a kind of pact with gnosticism and another with rationalism; neither imagination nor reason allowed itself to be completely vanquished.
The most beautiful that I know is that of a Gnostic philosopher: "God is Love, but Love itself cannot be perfect unless it has those upon whom it can be lavished and by whom it can be returned.
Seven centuries of struggle, and many hundred thousand folios, were the results of the remarkable fusion which followed. Out of these elements, united in various proportions, rose successively the Alexandrian philosophy, the Hellenists, the Therapeutæ, those strange Essene communists, with the innumerable sects of Gnostic or Christian heretics.
One insanity begets another, and belief in the presence of Antichrist leads to belief in the approaching restoration of the earth, the second advent of Christ and the millennium, which has infected the more extreme sects of the Bezpopovstchin, thus connecting it with Gnostic sects of various origins.
Which is Dr Jekyll and which Mr Hyde in this duadic personality is not of serious consequence, as they have both got into a better way of thinking and acting. Now, since his demission from these high functions, Jean Kostka has found that the chief piece of Gnostic devilry is in denying that the lost angels are eternally damned.
It is thus with 'Gnostic' and 'Gnosticism'; in the prominence given to gnosis or knowledge, as opposed to faith, lies the key to the whole system. The Greek Church has loved ever to style itself the Holy 'Orthodox' Church, the Latin, the Holy 'Catholic' Church. Follow up the thoughts which these words suggest.
Without going into the question of the date at which Irenaeus wrote at present, and assuming with the author of 'Supernatural Religion' that his first three books were published before the death of Eleutherus in A.D. 190 the latest date possible for them, it will be seen that the Gnostic teaching to which Irenaeus refers is supposed to begin at a time when his first book may very well have been concluded, and to end actually five years later than the latest date at which this portion of the work can have been published!
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