it-led person to be guided "into all the truth,"
to "love even as He loved," and to "overcome the world."[4] Here,
again, the human race is divided into those who have "received of the
Spirit," and those who have not so received; those who are "born from
above" and those who have had only a natural birth; the twice-born and
the once-born; those who are "of the Spirit," _i.e._ spiritual, and
those who are "of this world," _i.e._ empirical.

The Gnostic Sects of the second century had one common link and badge;
they all proposed a "way," often bizarre and strange-sounding to modern
ears, by which the soul, astray, lost, encumbered, or imprisoned in
matter, might attain its freedom and become _spiritual_. Most of the
Gnostic teachers, who in their flourishing time were as thick as
thistle-downs in summer, conceived of man as consisting of two "halves"
which corresponded with two totally different world-orders. There was
in man, or there belonged to man (1) a visible body, which {xiii} was
again dichotomized, and believed to be composed, according to many of
the Gnostics, of a subtle element like that of which they supposed Adam
in his unfallen state was made, which they named the _hylic_ body, and
a sheath of gross earthly matter which they called the _choical_
body.[5] There was also (2) another, invisible, "half," generally
divided into lower and higher stories. The lower story, the psychical,
was created or furnished by the Demiurge, or sub-divine creator of the
natural system, while the top-story, or pneumatical self, was a
_spiritual seed_ derived from the supreme spiritual Origin, the Divine
Pleroma, the Fulness of the Godhead. Those who possessed this
spiritual seed were "the elect," "the saved," who eventually, stripped
of their sheath of matter and their psychical dwelling, would be able
to pass all "the keepers of the way," and rise to the pure spiritual
life.

The Montanists launched in the second century a movement, borne along
on a mountain-wave of enthusiasm, for a "spiritual" Church composed
only of "spiritual" persons. They called themselves "the Spirituals,"
and they insisted that the age or dispensation of the Spirit had now
come. The Church, rigidly organized with its ordained officials, its
external machinery, and its accumulated traditions, was to them part of
an old and outworn system to be left behind. In the place of it was to
come a new order of "spiritual people" of whom the Montanist pro