CHAPTER III.

THE PECULIAR ARTICLES OF THE ORTHODOX FAITH DERIVED FROM THE GNOSTIC SYSTEM.

IN this chapter my purpose is briefly to detail a few important facts respecting the corruptions of Christianity, leaving the evidence of them to develope itself, as occasion may require in the course of the volume.

The Gnostic system, though intended to defeat, professed to embrace and to recommend the Gospel. By this profession and its artful adaptation to the corrupt propensities of the Jews and Gentiles, it greatly prevailed even in opposition to the Apostles. Its progress after their death was still more rapid and some well disposed persons more or less infected with its principles, but averse to its grosser parts, wished to unite it with the Apostolic doctrine. In forming this intermediate scheme, the authors, who flourished about the age of Justin Martyr, rejected the more offensive tenets of the Gnostics, but faithfully retained all those of Christ and his Apostles. By this unnatural union was composed a system which, with some accidental variations, has continued to this day, the belief of the far greater portion of Christians, a system, combining the

opposite qualities of the discordant originals, challenging the investigation of reason, yet evading it by the most absurd mysteries; holding forth the simplicity of divine wisdom, with all the perplexities and complications of human folly; inculcating the purest benevolence, yet engendering intolerance, persecution, malice; and finally calling upon all mankind to repentance, and nevertheless maintaining the inutility of virtue as the means of acceptance with God.

First, the framers of the reformed system, rejected the impious notion, that the Creator was an inferior evil Being, though, as we shall see, they adopted some of its consequences. On the other hand, they retained the divinity of the Son, though in subordination to the Father, and interpreted those passages in the Apostolic writings which, in opposition to the Gnostics, express his co-operation, as intending a personal union with God. The heresiarchs, sometimes supposed the Christ to be a God in the empty form of a man; at other times, they speak of him as a God which descended on the man Jesus at his baptism, dwelt in him during his ministry, and left him before his suffering. According to the first of these suppositions, Christ, as a man only in appearance, was born and lived, and died in appear ance, This the reformists rejected; and they adopted the second, as offering an easy and obvious coalescence with the doctrine of his humanity, on which the Apostles insisted as absolutely essential to Christianity. To adapt this article to the new creed, little more was necessary than a mere change of terms. The Gnostics, though they supposed the Christ to dwell in the man

Jesus, yet supposed them to be two distinct Beings, capable of being united in no other way but as a receptacle can unite with the thing received, and of being separated without violence or injury to either. According to this hypothesis, the man Jesus was no more the Christ than any of his disciples, having been born without him, having died without him, and performed without him all the functions of human nature. Such an hypothesis, if absurd, is yet specious and consistent. For what union can God have with a human body? Can infinite purity partake of the corruptions of an earthly creature? Can a boundless spirit be limited to flesh and blood? In defiance of these questions, which were or might be put, the reformers represented Jesus as a very God and a very man, and yet as the same person, consisting not of two beings, but of two natures in one being.

The original Gnostics carefully distinguished between Jesus and the Christ, though united; and they unequivocally marked the distinction, by supposing the former destitute of the latter, till the commencement of his ministry. On the other hand, those who aimed at reconciling the Apostolic doctrine with Gnosticism, laboured to make Jesus and the Christ one and the same being, and as much as possible to keep out of sight the idea that they had a separate, independent existence. With this view, they receded from the notion, that Jesus received the divinity at his baptism, and represented him a God, while a babe yet unborn; and that his birth might hold forth his twofold character, they exhibited him as miraculously born,-born of God, and born of

a woman; the former pointing to his divine, the latter certifying his human, nature.* By this representation the person of Christ became a riddle or mystery, comprehending in it the most enormous contradictions and absurdities which perverted reason can conceive. The Creator of the world having received his being from one of his creatures the infinite eternal mind born of flesh and blood-God having the infirmities and the mortal nature of man-man having the immortal nature and infinite perfections of God.

The natural depravity of man, original sin, predestination, the atonement, free grace, and justification by faith, next to the divinity of Christ, form the principal articles in the modern orthodox creed: and they are articles which necessarily followed from the principles of the Gnostics, though the reformers of their system do not appear to have adopted them. I shall here describe these doctrines, as they originated in the true spirit of Gnosticism, and not as they are glossed over by their advocates in modern days.

If the Creator of the world, as the Gnostics maintained, be an evil being, it would naturally follow that the human race, the principal work of his hands, is evil also-is disposed to do evil, without inclination or power to do good. If God be evil, he is also malevolent, and has made his creatures for misery and not for happiness;

* "Christ was born of a pure virgin, that the human birth might prove him to be a man, and the virgin shew that he was a God." Maximus Taurinensis Opera, p. 196.

and that he might secure his intention most effectually, he fore ordained or predestined them to be miserable. And least his decree should in any instance be frustrated, or least some men by their own power or option, become happy, their maker hath pronounced all mankind sinful in the sin of Adam, and liable to be punished on his account. Hence the doctrine of original sin, which represents all men, not excepting infants in the womb, obnoxious in the sight of God, to eternal death. The Gnostics denied that any difference existed in the nature of things between virtue and vice, and consequently denied there is any guilt in the latter or any merit in the former. On this principle good works are not necessary to salvation. The Gnostics admitted this consequence in its greatest latitude, and consistently abandoned themselves without any restraint to all manner of vices and impurities.* The supporters of reformed Gnosticism, in the number of whom were the Greek and Latin fathers, rejected this base principle altogether; but it was again resumed in the dark ages, when Christianity sunk under its weight of corruption, even below heathenism. Even the protestant reformers insisted that moral virtue is but shining guilt; and to this

* One of the principal founders of the Gnostic system was Simon the Samaritan; and it is remarkable, that he holds forth the inutility of virtue as the means of acceptance with God precisely in the way in which it is maintained by the Orthodox of modern days. "Salvation," says he, "is to be obtained not by good works, but by grace." Ou dia pakτων αγαθών, αλλά δια χαριτος τεύξεσθαι της σωτηρίας. Theod. Hær. Fal. Lib. i. c. i.