NICOL A I TANS

Heretics who arose in the Christian Church during the time of the apostles, (as appears from Rev. ii. 6, 15,) and are taken to be the fathers of the Gnostics. Some of the ancient fathers affirm that Nicolas, one of the seven first deacons, was the founder of this sect; that being blamed by the apostles for keeping company with his wife, whom he had left before to live in continence, he invented this brutal error to excuse his proceeding, and thought that impurity was a nece ary means to attain to eternal happine : others say that the holy apostles, reproaching him for being jealous of his wife, who was very handsome, he sent for her, and in a great a embly gave her leave to marry whom she pleased: upon which some libertines framed a heresy of their own, and unjustly called it by his name. They denied the Divinity of Christ by an hypostatical union, saying, the Divine inhabited, but was not united to, the human nature; they held that all pleasures were good, and that it was lawful to eat meats offered to idols. Becoming too much known by this name, they a umed that of the Gnostics, and divided themselves into other sects, called Phi bio nites, Stratiotics, Levitics, and Barborites.