ons they introduced into the text. It also explains the
bringing into one Gospel of things which of right clearly belong to
another--as in St. Mark iii. 14 [Greek: ous kai apostolous onomasen].

I do not propose (as will presently appear) in this way to explain any
considerable number of the actual corruptions of the text: but in no
other way is it possible to account for such systematic mutilations as
are found in Cod. B,--such monstrous additions as are found in Cod.
D,--such gross perturbations as are continually met with in one or more,
but never in all, of the earliest Codexes extant, as well as in the
oldest Versions and Fathers.

The plan of Tatian's Diatessaron will account for a great deal. He
indulges in frigid glosses, as when about the wine at the feast of Cana
in Galilee he reads that the servants knew 'because they had drawn the
water'; or in tasteless and stupid amplifications, as in the going back
of the Centurion to his house. I suspect that the [Greek: ti me erotas
peri tou agathou], 'Why do you ask me about that which is good?' is to
be referred to some of these tamperers with the Divine Word.

Sec. 3.

These professors of 'Gnosticism' held no consistent theory. The two
leading problems on which they exercised their perverse ingenuity are
found to have been (1) the origin of Matter, and (2) the origin of Evil.

(1) They taught that the world's artificer ('the Word') was Himself a
creature of 'the Father[459].' Encountered on the threshold of the
Gospel by the plain declaration that, 'In the beginning was the Word:
and the Word was with God: and the Word was God': and presently, 'All
things were made by Him';--they were much exercised. The expedients to
which they had recourse were certainly extraordinary. That 'Beginning'
(said Valentinus) was the first thing which 'the Father' created: which
He called 'Only begotten Son,' and also 'God': and in whom he implanted
the germ of all things. Seminally, that is, whatsoever subsequently came
into being was in Him. 'The Word' (he said) was a product of this
first-created thing. And 'All things were made by Him,' because in 'the
Word' was the entire essence of all the subsequent worlds (Aeons), to
which he assigned forms[460]. From which it is plain that, according to
Valentinus, 'the Word' was distinct from 'the Son'; who was not the
world's Creator. Both alike, however, he acknowledged to be 'God[461]':
but only, as we have seen already, using the term