Angel conspire to create man according to a form of light hovering before them in the Pleroma. They wished to fix by a charm the heavenly image to earth, but their man can only crawl; he is not that yet which he ought to be. No higher being can proceed from the powers of Nature. Then God takes compassion and imparts to him the germ of a higher life. Now at last man erects himself, stands there as a Revelation of God, and enters into hostility with the Demiurgos and his powers. Thus in the systems of the Gnostics there are exalted representations of the higher nature of man, and in that is grounded a susceptibility for the higher life. But MARCION acknowledges nothing in mankind before Christianity, which is analogous to the Christian life. Up to that period. everything in man has proceeded from the limited Demiurgos. But it is an inconsistency in his thinking and Christian consciousness when the Supreme God takes pity on man wholly estranged from him, and having nothing allied by which the higher life could find an entrance. Yet the Gnostics, though they ascribed a higher dignity to the Nature of Man, did not acknowledge the identity of all and the universality of Redemption. The Hylici, in whom only evil was manifested, remained altogether excluded; the Psychici also possessed no susceptibility for the higher Christian life; only the Pneumatici were fitted for it, and had, in this scheme, an inducement for a lofty contempt of the world. As far as the higher natures were kept under by the sway of the Demiurgos and the Hyle, and needed purification from a corrupt mixture, a point of connexion was presented for the need of Redemption, but the Gnostics. deviated from Christian principles in tracing evil not to Man's free agency, but placing it in a necessity of Nature and an evil principle.* The doctrine of Satan, in the Bible, has very much contributed to establish the point of view that sin is a free act, since it has clearly shown that a rational Spirit could παραχρῆμα, φησὶν, ἀναδραμεῖν ἄνω[θεν], ἐκέλευσαν ἑαυτοῖς λέγοντες ποιήσωμεν ἄνθρωπον κατ' εἰκόνα καὶ καθ ̓ ὁμοίωσιν· οὗ γανομένου καὶ μὴ δυναμένου ἀνορθοῦσθαι τοῦ πλάσματος διὰ τὸ ἀδρανὲς τῶν ἀγγέλων ἀλλὰ ὡς σκώληκος σκαρίζοντος, οἰκτείρασα αὐτὸν ἡ ἄνω δύναμις διὰ τὸ ἐν, ὁμοιώματι αὐτῆς γεγονέναι, ἔπεμψε σπινθῆρα τῆς ζωῆς, ὃς διήγειρε τὸν ἄνθρωπον καὶ ζήν ἐποίησε. Cf. Iren. 1, 24. According to Basilides, Evil rests, on the ouyxvois aoxin, the original chaotic state in the σωρός, the πανσπερμία, and on the material elements cleaving to it. fall from God not owing to his connexion with Matter, but by a free act of the Will. Yet to the Gnostics, Satan was nothing else than a necessary manifestation and representation of the Hyle. By this physical conception of Sin, the acknowledgment of moral corruption and the need of Redemption again lost its significance. 2. THE OPOSITION OF THE CHURCH DOCTRINE. As the Church Teachers were chiefly engaged in combating the Gnostics, their general tendency at this period is easily understood. They had not to insist so much on human corruption and the need of Redemption, for these points had been brought forward, though in a one-sided manner, by the Gnostics; on the other hand, it was needful to lay peculiar stress on the doctrines of free determination and the general susceptibility of Redemption. Among the special topics one of the most important is, 3. THE CHURCH DOCTRINE OF THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. With the twofold designation in Genesis for expressing the likeness in man to God, and is connected the distinction which was so influential even down to the Middle Ages, of εἰκών and ὁμοίωσις τοῦ Θεοῦ, the former denoting the likeness to God in the natural constitution of man; the latter, the realization of that constitution in its matured and developed state. It is the first germ of the later important distinction between the dona naturalia and supernaturalia in the original state of Man. The Church Teachers used to regard the Image of God as comprehending all the intellectual and moral powers of Man, Reason, and Free Will, but to which communion with God must be added, in order to bring forward the likeness by which Man is raised above his natural limits. Many reckoned the body as belonging to the image of God, founded on the idea, that the peculiar human stamp and impress of the divine life must be also represented in a bodily organism.* But this * Tertullian, De Resurrectione Carnis, c. 6.—Quodcunque enim limus exprimebatur, Christus cogitabatur homo futurus, quod et linius et caro, sermo, quod et terra tunc. Sic enim præfatio patris ad filium; faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram. Et fecit hominem Deus, id utique quod finxit, ad imaginem Dei fecit illum, scilicet Christi. THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. 181 truth was conceived in a very sensuous manner in the Clementine Homilies, and by Melito of Sardis, whose representations were impugned by Origen. A higher conception of this fact is given by those persons who view the body in relation to Christ, who in his entire personality was to realize the image of God. So far, man was created as a type of Christ, and his bodily organism was a pledge of his Incarnation. A class of Jewish theologians had already reckoned the Immortality of the Soul among those things which did not belong originally to the image of God. The ux was naturally mortal, and received immortal life, first by a communication of the divine Spirit; when it lost the divine life by sin, it again became mortal. Hence the souls of the wicked perish, and are awakened again at the Resurrection in order to suffer punishment. Thus, too, the Clementine Homilies* suppose that the souls of the wicked will be punished by annihilation. Tatian† and Justin, likewise believed souls to be naturally mortal, but that by the will of God they will live for ever either in happiness or misery. It formed the basis of this view, that immortal life was considered not as a mere continuation of the present life, but as something specifically different and higher. In the apagoia were comprehended the marks of a divine holy life destined for Eternity, in the peog᧠those of a sinful, ungodly and transitory life. The Gnostics held that only the Pneumatici were immortal, that the Hylici would be annihilated, and the Psychici would be immortal if they turned to the good, but would be annihilated if they joined the Hylici. Against this doctrine Tertullian and Origen maintained the natural Immortality of the Soul. The former attacked Hermogenes, who derived the substance of the Soul from the λn, and hence could not admit that the nature of * Hom. 7, 6. + Πρ. Ελλην. 13. * Dial. c. Tryph. c. 6.—ζωῆς δέ ψυχὴ μετέχει, ἐπεὶ ζῆν αὐτὴν ὁ Θεὸς βούλεται. Οὕτως ἄρα καὶ οὐ μεθέξει ποτὲ, ὅτε αὐτὴν μη θέλοι ζῆν οὐ γὰρ δι' αὐτῆς ἐστι τὸ ζῆν ὡς τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἀλλὰ ὥσπερ ἄνθρωπος οὐ διαπαντος ἐστιν οὐδὲ σύνεστιν ἀεὶ τῇ ψυχῇ τὸ σῶμα, ἀλλ ̓ ὅτε ἂν δέῃ λυθῆναι τὴν ἁρμονίαν ταύτην, καταλείπει ἡ ψυχὴ τὸ σῶμα καὶ ὁ ἄνθρωπος οὐκ ἔστιν, οὕτω καὶ, ὅταν δέῃ τὴν ψυχὴν μηκέτι εἶναι, ἀπέστη ἀπ' αὐτῆς τὸ ζωτικὸν πνεῦμα καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν ἡ ψυχὴ ἔτι, ἀλλὰ καὶ αὐτὴ ὅθεν ἐλήφθε ἐκεῖσε χωρεῖ παλιν. § Olshausen, Antiquissimorum ecclesiæ græcæ patrum de immortalitate sententiæ recensentur. 1827. (Pragr.) See Ullman, Stud. u. Krit. i. 2. the soul was allied to God, but asserted that the soul was naturally transitory and could only be restored to life by a divine miracle. It agrees with this, that he taught that the wicked will be dissolved in the λn.* However disposed Tertullian might be to sensuous representations, his deep religious consciousness of the divine constitution of the Soul kept him back from Materialism. He wrote a work entitled De censu anima, which has been lost, but of which fragments and extracts are to be found in his treatise De animâ. In this book,t and in one controversial writing against Hermogenes, he teaches the natural immortality of the Soul. Among other proofs of it, he reckons its uninterrupted activity which is continued even in dreams. Origen maintained against Heracleon, that it is a contradiction for a being naturally mortal to be changed into one that is immortal. He reckons the aplagro among the marks of a spiritual nature, allied to God. In later years he was called from Cæsarea to a synod in Arabia to oppose those who maintained the opinion that the soul died with the body, and would awake with it at the Resurrection. Eusebius§ seems to assume that this was a novel opinion held only by some, but it is questionable whether it had not been handed down in those parts from more ancient times. He also remarks that Origen's opinion gained the victory.|| 4. OF THE FALL AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. We might imagine that those Church Teachers in whom the antagonism to Gnosticism was specially represented, would show it with remarkable earnestness in reference to this doctrine, and hence would assert the freedom of man in the strongest terms. But such was not the case, at least to the degree that might be expected; we rather find it among those who approximated to the Gnosis. The reason of this inverted * Thedoret. Fab. Hæret. i. 19-Tòv dè diábodov kai Tovs dayμovaç tis Tηv öλnv ávaxОúσcolai. Guil. Böhmer, De Hermogene Africano. Sundiæ. 1832. Ibid. c. 11. Пepi áρxov iii. p. 26, ed. Redep. § Hist. Eccles. vi. 37. || Hippolytus assumes the immortal nature of the soul; but the separation and dissolution of the body in which death consists, was already necessarily granted with its composition out of different elements. It was perishable, in common with the world.-[JACOBI.] THE FALL AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 183 relation is very discernible. For that party which was most decidedly opposed to the Gnosis, gave prominence to the supernatural element, the other, on the contrary, to the harmony between the divine and the human, that is, to the natural element. Hence the former were more disposed to ally themselves to the Gnostics in the doctrine of human corruption, and the latter to place in a strong light the importance of human reason, to which they would be inclined by the Grecian element of culture. We begin with the strictly anti-Gnostic party, since the tendency of the more moderate, as distinguished from it, becomes the more intelligible. Irenæus had to prove to the Gnostics, that the inclination of human nature to evil did not contradict the admission of a perfect Creator, and that Freedom and the capability of improvement in spite of corruption, were still within every one's reach. The common Gnostic dilemma was,-if God created the first man good, whence then is Sin? if he created him defective, then is he the Author of Sin. To this he replies: Man is neither perfect, nor yet created with faults; but originally he was in a state of childlike Innocence; had he remained obedient, he would also have been in communion with God, and passed over to everlasting life. But left to himself, in consequence of Sin, he became the victim of mortality and evil (the poogà). Both have passed from the first man to his descendants, as a prisoner disinherits his progeny who may be born during his imprisonment. In this condition, Death, which forms the transit to a higher life, is rather a blessing than a punismhent from God. Irenæus considers Free Will as a mark of the ineffaceable image of God in man, and supposes that faith is conditioned by it.† *Iræn. iv. 38; iii. 23. Hippolytus also earnestly inculcates the original Freedom of man on subjective ethical grounds, as well as on account of the Theodicy, p. 335.—ἐπὶ τούτοις τὸν πάντων ἄρχοντα ὁ δημιουργὸς (either so or with Bunsen, nulovpywv is to be substituted for the textual reading δημιουργον) ἐκ πασῶν σύνθετον (instead of συνθέτων) οὐσιῶν ἐσκεύασεν, οὐ θεὸν θέλων ποιεῖν ἔσφηλεν, οὐδὲ ἄγγελον, μὴ πλανῶ, ἀλλ ̓ ἄνθρωπον. —Ὁ δε κτίσας θεὸς κακὸν οὐκ ἐποίει οὐ καλὸν καὶ ἀγαθον (thus Bunsen, instead of οὐδὲ ποιεῖ καλόν, κ. ά. But the οὐδὲ ποιεῖ seems correct, and a verb between this and the following words may have dropped out) ἀγαθὸς γὰρ ὁ ποιῶν. What follows is in a degree opposed to the preceding thought, that man was created to rule all things. For since |