iah were indulged in a freer latitude,
both of faith and practice, than has ever been allowed in succeeding
ages. As the terms of communion were insensibly narrowed, and the
spiritual authority of the prevailing party was exercised with
increasing severity, many of its most respectable adherents, who were
called upon to renounce, were provoked to assert their private opinions,
to pursue the consequences of their mistaken principles, and openly to
erect the standard of rebellion against the unity of the church. The
Gnostics were distinguished as the most polite, the most learned, and
the most wealthy of the Christian name; and that general appellation,
which expressed a superiority of knowledge, was either assumed by their
own pride, or ironically bestowed by the envy of their adversaries. They
were almost without exception of the race of the Gentiles, and their
principal founders seem to have been natives of Syria or Egypt, where
the warmth of the climate disposes both the mind and the body to
indolent and contemplative devotion. The Gnostics blended with the
faith of Christ many sublime but obscure tenets, which they derived from
oriental philosophy, and even from the religion of Zoroaster, concerning
the eternity of matter, the existence of two principles, and the
mysterious hierarchy of the invisible world. As soon as they launched
out into that vast abyss, they delivered themselves to the guidance of
a disordered imagination; and as the paths of error are various and
infinite, the Gnostics were imperceptibly divided into more than fifty
particular sects, of whom the most celebrated appear to have been the
Basilidians, the Valentinians, the Marcionites, and, in a still later
period, the Manichaeans. Each of these sects could boast of its bishops
and congregations, of its doctors and martyrs; and, instead of the Four
Gospels adopted by the church, the heretics produced a multitude of
histories, in which the actions and discourses of Christ and of his
apostles were adapted to their respective tenets. The success of
the Gnostics was rapid and extensive. They covered Asia and Egypt,
established themselves in Rome, and sometimes penetrated into the
provinces of the West. For the most part they arose in the second
century, flourished during the third, and were suppressed in the fourth
or fifth, by the prevalence of more fashionable controversies, and by
the superior ascendant of the reigning power. Though they constantly
di