human race from vice and error, and to conduct them in
the paths of life and immortality. But the prevailing doctrine of the
eternity and inherent pravity of matter infected the primitive churches
of the East. Many among the Gentile proselytes refused to believe that
a celestial spirit, an undivided portion of the first essence, had been
personally united with a mass of impure and contaminated flesh; and,
in their zeal for the divinity, they piously abjured the humanity, of
Christ. While his blood was still recent on Mount Calvary, [10]
the Docetes, a numerous and learned sect of Asiatics, invented the
phantastic system, which was afterwards propagated by the Marcionites,
the Manichaeans, and the various names of the Gnostic heresy. [11] They
denied the truth and authenticity of the Gospels, as far as they relate
the conception of Mary, the birth of Christ, and the thirty years that
preceded the exercise of his ministry. He first appeared on the banks of
the Jordan in the form of perfect manhood; but it was a form only, and
not a substance; a human figure created by the hand of Omnipotence to
imitate the faculties and actions of a man, and to impose a perpetual
illusion on the senses of his friends and enemies. Articulate sounds
vibrated on the ears of the disciples; but the image which was impressed
on their optic nerve eluded the more stubborn evidence of the touch; and
they enjoyed the spiritual, not the corporeal, presence of the Son of
God. The rage of the Jews was idly wasted against an impassive phantom;
and the mystic scenes of the passion and death, the resurrection and
ascension, of Christ were represented on the theatre of Jerusalem for
the benefit of mankind. If it were urged, that such ideal mimicry,
such incessant deception, was unworthy of the God of truth, the Docetes
agreed with too many of their orthodox brethren in the justification of
pious falsehood. In the system of the Gnostics, the Jehovah of Israel,
the Creator of this lower world, was a rebellious, or at least an
ignorant, spirit. The Son of God descended upon earth to abolish his
temple and his law; and, for the accomplishment of this salutary end, he
dexterously transferred to his own person the hope and prediction of a
temporal Messiah.

[Footnote 10: Apostolis adhuc in seculo superstitibus, apud Judaeam
Christi sanguine recente, Phantasma domini corpus asserebatur. Hieronym,
advers. Lucifer. c. 8. The epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans,