effects of a corrupt ambition were spread through every rank of the
sacred order" (p. 73). During this century also we find much scandal
caused by the pretended celibacy of the clergy, for the
people--regarding celibacy as purer than marriage, and considering that
"they, who took wives, were of all others the most subject to the
influence of malignant demons"--urged their clergy to remain celibate,
"and many of the sacred order, especially in Africa, consented to
satisfy the desires of the people, and endeavoured to do this in such a
manner as not to offer an entire violence to their own inclinations. For
this purpose, they formed connections with those women who had made vows
of perpetual chastity; and it was an ordinary thing for an ecclesiastic
to admit one of these fair saints to the participation of his bed, but
still under the most solemn declarations, that nothing passed in this
commerce that was contrary to the rules of chastity and virtue" (p. 73).
Such was the morality of the clergy as early as the third century!

The doctrine of the Church in these primitive times was as confused as
its morality was impure. In the first century (during which we really
know nothing of the Christian Church), Dr. Mosheim, in dealing with
"divisions and heresies," points to the false teachers mentioned in the
New Testament, and the rise of the Gnostic heresy. Gnosticism (from
[Greek: gnosis] knowledge), a system compounded of Christianity and
Oriental philosophy, long divided the Church with the doctrines known as
orthodox. The Gnostics believed in the existence of the two opposing
principles of good and evil, the latter being by many considered as the
creator of the world. They held that from the Supreme God emanated a
number of AEons--generally put at thirty; (see throughout "Irenaeus
Against Heresies")--and some maintained that one of these, Christ,
descended on the man Jesus at his baptism, and left him again just
before his passion; others that Jesus had not a real, but only an
apparent, body of flesh. The Gnostic philosophy had many forms and many
interdivisions; but most of the "heresies" of the first centuries were
branches of this one tree: it rose into prominence, it is said, about
the time of Adrian, and among its early leaders were Marcion, Basilides,
and Valentinus. In addition to the various Gnostic theories, there was a
deep mark of division between the Jewish and the Gentile Christians; the
former developed into t