e. They appealed to visions and a knowledge
of the celestial world (ii. 18), and therefore set up a worship of
angels which tended to thrust Christ from His true position in the
creed of the Church. They treated the body with unsparing severity
(ii. 23), they abstained from meat and drink, and paid a punctilious
attention to festivals, new moons, and sabbaths (ii. 16). St. Paul
calls these practices "material rudiments" (ii. 8), elementary methods
now superseded by faith in Christ. Moreover, it is almost certain that
literal circumcision was practised (ii. 11). These things point to
Judaism. And yet St. Paul does not seem to be rebuking a return to the
Judaism of the Old Testament. He could hardly have described a
compliance with Old Testament injunctions as an "arbitrary religion"
and "doctrines of men" (ii. 1, 22, 23). It might be Pharisaism, but if
we look in the direction of Judaism, it is most natural that we should
think of a Judaism resembling that of the Essenes. The Essenes were
vegetarians, they avoided wine, they kept the sabbath with special
scrupulousness, and had some secret teaching about the angels. These
resemblances have tempted some commentators to identify the false
teachers with the Essenes. But there is nothing to prove that the
Essenes worshipped the angels, and St. Paul makes no mention of the
Essene veneration for the sun, or their monastic life, or their
elaborate process of initiation. Besides this, the principal community
of Essenes dwelt by the Dead Sea, and it is very doubtful if any
existed in Asia Minor.

It is best to confess our ignorance. All that we can say is that the
scruple-mongers at Colossae taught doctrines which had points of
contact with Essenism. They employed some affected interpretation of
the Old Testament. They also were influenced by heathenism in their
conception of half-divine beings intermediate between God and the
world. How far they held any definitely dualistic view of matter we
cannot tell. {174} But their system was a mischievous theosophy, which
they endeavoured to popularize under catchwords like "wisdom" and
"philosophy." The fact that there was at this time such a widespread
tendency to adopt an exaggerated asceticism and theories about
mediatorial spirits, makes it unnecessary to suppose that the Colossian
heresy need be affiliated to any particular school of speculation.

The Epistle consists mainly of a more or less indirect argument aga