nt Gnosticism anticipated
Catholicism as a system of doctrine and an institute of worship. These
results have been strengthened by Carl Schmidt (Texte u. Unters. VIII.
1. 2). Even purgatory, prayers for the dead, and many other things,
raised in speculative questions and definitely answered, are found in
those Coptic Gnostic writings, and are then met with again in
Catholicism. One general remark may be permitted in conclusion. The
Gnostics were not interested in apologetics, and that is a very
significant fact. The [Greek: pneuma] in man was regarded by them as a
supernatural principle, and on that account they are free from all
rationalism and moralistic dogmatism. For that very reason they are in
earnest with the idea of revelation, and do not attempt to prove it or
convert its contents into natural truths. They did endeavour to prove
that their doctrines were Christian, but renounced all proof that
revelation is the truth (proofs from antiquity). One will not easily
find in the case of the Gnostics themselves, the revealed truth
described as philosophy, or morality as the philosophic life. If we
compare therefore, the first and fundamental system of Catholic
doctrine, that of Origen, with the system of the Gnostics, we shall find
that Origen, like Basilides and Valentinus, was a philosopher of
revelation, but that he had besides a second element which had its
origin in apologetics.]

CHAPTER V

MARCION'S ATTEMPT TO SET ASIDE THE OLD TESTAMENT FOUNDATION OF
CHRISTIANITY, TO PURIFY TRADITION AND TO REFORM CHRISTENDOM ON THE BASIS
OF THE PAULINE GOSPEL

Marcion cannot be numbered among the Gnostics in the strict sense of the
word.[365] For (1) he was not guided by any speculatively scientific, or
even by an apologetic, but by a soteriological interest.[366] (2) He
therefore put all emphasis on faith, not on Gnosis.[367] (3) In the
exposition of his ideas he neither applied the elements of any Semitic
religious wisdom, nor the methods of the Greek philosophy of
religion.[368] (4) He never made the distinction between an esoteric and
an exoteric form of religion. He rather clung to the publicity of the
preaching, and endeavoured to reform Christendom, in opposition to the
attempts at founding schools for those who knew and mystery cults for
such as were in quest of initiation. It was only after the failure of
his attempts at reform that he founded churches of his own, in which
brotherly equality, freedom from