al essence, ascribed by the ancients to human souls, celestial
beings, and even the Deity himself, does not exclude the notion of
extended space; and their imagination was satisfied with a subtile
nature of air, or fire, or aether, incomparably more perfect than
the grossness of the material world. If we define the place, we must
describe the figure, of the Deity. Our experience, perhaps our vanity,
represents the powers of reason and virtue under a human form. The
Anthropomorphites, who swarmed among the monks of Egypt and the
Catholics of Africa, could produce the express declaration of Scripture,
that man was made after the image of his Creator. [12] The venerable
Serapion, one of the saints of the Nitrian deserts, relinquished, with
many a tear, his darling prejudice; and bewailed, like an infant, his
unlucky conversion, which had stolen away his God, and left his mind
without any visible object of faith or devotion. [13]

[Footnote 12: The pilgrim Cassian, who visited Egypt in the beginning
of the vth century, observes and laments the reign of anthropomorphism
among the monks, who were not conscious that they embraced the system
of Epicurus, (Cicero, de Nat. Deorum, i. 18, 34.) Ab universo propemodum
genere monachorum, qui per totam provinciam Egyptum morabantur, pro
simplicitatis errore susceptum est, ut e contraric memoratum pontificem
(Theophilus) velut haeresi gravissima depravatum, pars maxima seniorum
ab universo fraternitatis corpore decerneret detestandum, (Cassian,
Collation. x. 2.) As long as St. Augustin remained a Manichaean, he was
scandalized by the anthropomorphism of the vulgar Catholics.]

[Footnote 13: Ita est in oratione senex mente confusus, eo quod illam
imaginem Deitatis, quam proponere sibi in oratione consueverat, aboleri
de suo corde sentiret, ut in amarissimos fletus, crebrosque singultus
repente prorumpens, in terram prostratus, cum ejulatu validissimo
proclamaret; "Heu me miserum! tulerunt a me Deum meum, et quem nunc
teneam non habeo, vel quem adorem, aut interpallam am nescio." Cassian,
Collat. x. 2.]

III. Such were the fleeting shadows of the Docetes. A more substantial,
though less simple, hypothesis, was contrived by Cerinthus of Asia, [14]
who dared to oppose the last of the apostles. Placed on the confines of
the Jewish and Gentile world, he labored to reconcile the Gnostic with
the Ebionite, by confessing in the same Messiah the supernatural union
of a man and a God; and this