Bardesanists

pl. [Named after Bardes anès, a Syrian of Ede a, in the second century.] A Christian sect which followed the person above named. His tenets were founded on the Oriental philosophy. He supposed that God at first made men with ethereal bodies, but Satan tempted these first human beings to sin, and then put round them the gro er bodies which we now po e ; and that when Jesus descended on earth he appeared in an ethereal body, and taught men to subdue their carnal depravity by abstinence, meditation, and fasting. Barde sanes afterwards returned to the ordinary Christian belief, but his followers long held the tenets which he had abandoned. (Mosheim: Ch. Hist., Cent. ii.)