feeble copies." (2)

(1) There seems to be some doubt about the exact meaning of this
expression. Even Zeus himself was sometimes called 'Soter,' and at
feasts, it is said, the THIRD goblet was always drunk in his honor.

(2) See also The Gnostic Story of Jesus Christ, by Gilbert T.
Sadler (C. W. Daniel, 1919).

This passage brings vividly before the mind the process of which I
have spoken, namely, the fusion and mutual interchange of ideas on the
subject of the Savior during the period anterior to our era. Also it
exemplifies to us through what an abstract sphere of Gnostic religious
speculation the doctrine had to travel before reaching its expression in
Christianity. (1) This exalted and high philosophical conception passed
on and came out again to some degree in the Fourth Gospel and the
Pauline Epistles (especially I Cor. xv); but I need hardly say it
was not maintained. The enthusiasm of the little scattered Christian
bodies--with their communism of practice with regard to THIS world and
their intensity of faith with regard to the next--began to wane in the
second and third centuries A.D. As the Church (with capital initial)
grew, so was it less and less occupied with real religious feeling, and
more and more with its battles against persecution from outside, and its
quarrels and dissensions concerning heresies within its own borders. And
when at the Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.) it endeavored to establish an
official creed, the strife and bitterness only increased. "There is no
wild beast," said the Emperor Julian, "like an angry theologian." Where
the fourth Evangelist had preached the gospel of Love, and Paul had
announced redemption by an inner and spiritual identification with
Christ, "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive";
and whereas some at any rate of the Pagan cults had taught a glorious
salvation by the new birth of a divine being within each man: "Be of
good cheer, O initiates in the mystery of the liberated god; For to
you too out of all your labors and sorrows shall come Liberation"--the
Nicene creed had nothing to propound except some extremely futile
speculations about the relation to each other of the Father and the
Son, and the relation of BOTH to the Holy Ghost, and of all THREE to the
Virgin Mary--speculations which only served for the renewal of shameful
strife and animosities--riots and bloodshed and murder--within the
Church, and the mockery of the heathen without.