mmunities, and undeserving of the name
"Christians."[343] There must therefore have been at that time, in Rome
and Asia Minor at least, a really perfect separation of those schools
from the Churches (it was different in Alexandria). Notwithstanding,
this continued to be the region from which those schools obtained their
adherents. For the Valentinians recognised that the common Christians
were much better than the heathen, that they occupied a middle position
between the "pneumatic" and the "hylic", and might look forward to a
kind of salvation. This admission, as well as their conforming to the
common Christian tradition, enabled them to spread their views in a
remarkable way, and they may not have had any objection in many cases,
to their converts remaining in the great Church. But can this community
have perceived everywhere and at once, that the Valentinian distinction
of "psychic" and "pneumatic" is not identical with the scriptural
distinction of children and men in understanding? Where the organisation
of the school (the union for worship) required a long time of probation,
where degrees of connection with it were distinguished, and a strict
asceticism demanded of the perfect, it followed of course that those on
the lower stage should not be urged to a speedy break with the
Church.[344] But after the creation of the catholic confederation of
churches, existence was made more and more difficult for these schools.
Some of them lived on somewhat like our freemason-unions, some, as in
the East, became actual sects (confessions), in which the wise and the
simple now found a place, as they were propagated by families. In both
cases they ceased to be what they had been at the beginning. From about
210, they ceased to be a factor of the historical development, though
the Church of Constantine and Theodosius was alone really able to
suppress them.

4. _The most important Gnostic Doctrines._

We have still to measure and compare with the earliest tradition those
Gnostic doctrines which, partly at once and partly in the following
period, became important. Once more, however, we must expressly refer to
the fact, that the epoch-making significance of Gnosticism for the
history of dogma, must not be sought chiefly in the particular
doctrines, but rather in the whole way in which Christianity is here
conceived and transformed. The decisive thing is the conversion of the
Gospel into a doctrine, into an absolute philosophy of