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Updated: May 15, 2025
There are some objections against the authority of Moses and the prophets, which too readily present themselves to the sceptical mind; though they can only be derived from our ignorance of remote antiquity, and from our incapacity to form an adequate judgment of the divine economy. These objections were eagerly embraced and as petulantly urged by the vain science of the Gnostics.
The "creed of those who know" never reached actual monotheism, the conception of one personal god, who created everything according to his own free will and rules over everything with unlimited wisdom and love. The god of the Gnostics is a dark, mysterious being which can only arrive at a consciousness of itself through a manifold descending scale of forces, which flow from the god himself.
These important events will justify some inquiry into the doctrine and story of the Paulicians; and, as they cannot plead for themselves, our candid criticism will magnify the good, and abate or suspect the evil, that is reported by their adversaries. The Gnostics, who had distracted the infancy, were oppressed by the greatness and authority, of the church.
From its supposed imperfections, the Gnostics as hastily inferred that it never was instituted by the wisdom of the Deity.
The merit and effect of a copy depends on its resemblance with the original; but the primitive Christians were ignorant of the genuine features of the Son of God, his mother, and his apostles: the statue of Christ at Paneas in Palestine was more probably that of some temporal savior; the Gnostics and their profane monuments were reprobated; and the fancy of the Christian artists could only be guided by the clandestine imitation of some heathen model.
If I have given more space to the great Alexandrian Jew than my narrow limits ought to afford, it is because I think I may thus avoid the necessity of saying much about the philosophic schemes of the Neo-Platonists, the phantasies of the Gnostics, or the occasionally daring speculations of the Christian Fathers.
Their spiritual life is parasitic: it is sheltered by convictions which belong, not to them, but to the society of which they form a part; it is nourished by processes in which they take no share. Let us pause to consider this immortal yearning for immortality even though the gnostics or intellectuals may be able to say that what follows is not philosophy but rhetoric.
To the Gnostics we owe the earliest examples of our sacred images. The countenance of our Saviour, along with those of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, appears on some of their engraved gems and seals.
As to the evidence obtained from the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii, it is said that much which is of a phallic character has been, from quite worthy motives, kept in the background. An important fact has however been mentioned by Mr. C. W. King, M.A., in his well known work on the Gnostics and, their Remains, and this at least can be commented upon.
He has dwelt among Gnostics, Martinists, Modern Albigenses, and Spiritualists; he appears to have been identified with all, and though he does not accuse himself of the capital offence of conscious Satanism, he has been quite well acquainted with Satanism, and, next best to seeing the devil one's self, he has known many who have.
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