GNOSTICISM

(.Gr.yvuxus, knowledge.) A philosophical system of religion which prevailed in the East during the four first centuries of our era, and exercised great influence upon Christian theology, giving birth to numerous and widely-diffused heresies, and insinuating itself under a modified form even into the writings of the most orthodox fathers. The origin of the system is involved in considerable obscurity:inits leading principles it seems to point to the Oriental philosophy as its genuine parent; but it is objected to this solution that the fathers refer it, together with the errors similarly introduced by Platonism, to a Greek origin, and appeal to the cosmogonies of Hosiod and others, as the real exemplars from which it is imitated. It in to marked, however, that the fathers were universally Ignorant of the Oriental philosophy; from which we may conclude that their opinion upon such a point is not nece arily decisive.Amodem solution conceives Alexandria to have been the central point to which the speculations of the Greeks and the Orientals converged, and from whence they frequently re-i ued, after having undergone the proce of fusion into a common ma . It is certain that Alexandria was, during the time we have spoken of, a celebrated resort of Gnostic opinions, both within and without the Church. The grand principle of this philosophy seems to have been an attempt to reconcile the difficulties attending upon the existence of evil in the world. Evil, it was supposed, being the contrary of good, must be contrary to, and, therefore, the opponent of, God: if the opponent of God, then independent of him and coeternal. From the many imperfections which are involved in all outward and sensible objects, it was held that matter must contain in itself the principle of all evil. The human soul, on the contrary, which aspires after and tends to a higher and more perfect development, was held to be the gift of the Supreme Deity, imparted to man for the sake of combating against the material principle, and with the prospect of finally subduing it. From the Supreme God on the one hand, and matter on the other, succeeding philosophers produced various fanciful genealogies of superior intelligences,under the name of./Eons — a Greek word, signifying, properly, periods; thus representing these divinities themselves by a name expre ive of the time and order of their generation, much as in our current language the terms reign, or government, are frequently put for the king or ministers governing. The Demiurgus, who formed the world out of matter, appears to have been an./Eon derived from the evil principle. He was also the God of the Old Testament, who was considered by the Gnostics to be an object of aversion to the One Supreme God, to counteract whose machinations the VEon Christ was sent into the world. This is the earlier and simpler system, which is attributed to Simon Magus: the number of the ^Eons was fancifully multiplied in later times, and an extravagant theory of morals founded upon die system. The object of these « principally was, as may be supposed, to depreciate the honour due to the body, as being a part of matter, and to elevate the thinking facull}, or at least to remove it from all consideration of worldly things. The Gnostics imagined that by a iduous practice of certain mental and bodily austerities,they could obtain an intuition of the divine nature, and dwell in communion with it; and this part of their system is adopted to a considerable extent by Clemens Alex and rin us, whose opinions, as expre ed in his Pmdagogus, are very similar to those of a Pietist of more modern times. The Gnostics522 split in proce of time into various sects, [s. 536]