istianity. St. Peter, who fell in with him originally in Samaria,
seems to have encountered him again at Rome. At Rome St. Polycarp met
Marcion of Pontus, whose followers spread through Italy, Egypt, Syria,
Arabia, and Persia.

"When [the reader of Christian history] comes to the second century,"
says Dr. Burton, "he finds that Gnosticism, under some form or other,
was professed in every part of the then civilized world. He finds it
divided into schools, as numerously and as zealously attended as any
which Greece or Asia could boast in their happiest days. He meets with
names totally unknown to him before, which excited as much sensation as
those of Aristotle or Plato. He hears of volumes having been written in
support of this new philosophy, not one of which has survived to our own
day." Many of the founders of these sects had been Christians. Others
were of Jewish parentage; others were more or less connected in fact
with the pagan rites to which their own bore so great a resemblance.

Whatever might be the history of these sects, and though it may be a
question whether they can be properly called "superstitions," and though
many of them numbered educated men among their teachers and followers,
they closely resembled--at least in ritual and profession--the vagrant
pagan mysteries which have been above described. Their very name of
"Gnostic" implied the possession of a secret, which was to be
communicated to their disciples. Ceremonial observances were the
preparation, and symbolical rites the instrument, of initiation. Tatian
and Montanus, the representatives of very distinct schools, agreed in
making asceticism a rule of life.

Such were the Gnostics; and to external and prejudiced spectators,
whether philosophers, as Celsus and Porphyry, or the multitude, they
wore an appearance sufficiently like the Church to be mistaken for her
in the latter part of the ante-Nicene period, as she was confused with
the pagan mysteries in the earlier.

Let us proceed in our contemplation of this reflection, as it may be
called, of primitive Christianity in the mirror of the world. All three
writers, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny, call it a "superstition"; this
is no accidental imputation, but is repeated by a variety of subsequent
writers and speakers. The charge of Thyestean banquets scarcely lasts a
hundred years; but, while pagan witnesses are to be found, the Church is
accused of superstition. Now what is meant by the word th