forward as
theological instructors.

Gnosticism may appear to us a most fantastic system; but, in the second
century, it was dreaded as a very formidable adversary by the Church;
and the extent to which it spread attests that it possessed not a few of
the elements of popularity. Its doctrine of Aeons, or Divine Emanations,
was quite in accordance with theories which had then gained extensive
currency; and its account of the formation of the present world was
countenanced by established modes of thinking. Many who cherished a
hereditary prejudice against Judaism were gratified by the announcement
that the Demiurge was no other than the God of the Israelites; and many
more were flattered by the statement that some souls are essentially
purer and better than others. [435:1] The age was sunk in sensuality;
and, as it was the great boast of the heresiarchs that their _Gnosis_
secured freedom from the dominion of the flesh, multitudes, who secretly
sighed for deliverance, were thus induced to test its efficacy. But
Gnosticism, in whatever form it presented itself, was a miserable
perversion of the gospel. Some of its teachers entirely rejected the Old
Testament; others reduced its history to a myth; whilst all mutilated
and misinterpreted the writings of the apostles and evangelists. Like
the Jewish Cabbalists, who made void the law of God by expositions which
fancy suggested and tradition embalmed, the Gnostics by their
far-fetched and unnatural comments, threw an air of obscurity over the
plainest passages of the New Testament. Some of them, aware that they
could derive no support from the inspired records, actually fabricated
Gospels, and affixed to them the names of apostles or evangelists, in
the hope of thus obtaining credit for the spurious documents. [435:2]
Whilst Gnosticism in this way set aside the authority of the Word of
God, it also lowered the dignity of the Saviour; and even when Christ
was most favourably represented by it, He was but an Aeon removed at the
distance of several intermediate generations from the Supreme Ruler of
the universe. The propagators of this system altogether misconceived the
scope of the gospel dispensation. They substituted salvation by carnal
ordinances for salvation by faith; they represented man in his natural
state rather as an ignoramus than a sinner; and, whilst they absurdly
magnified their own Gnosis, they entirely discarded the doctrine of a
vicarious atonement.

Shortly af