CENT. IL the Father of lights, and to him it shall return; and then the world shall be entirely destroyed." PART II. Various sects of the Valen XVII. We learn from ancient writers, that the tinians. sect of the Valentinians was divided into many branches. One of these was the sect of the Ptolemaites, so cailed from their chief Ptolemy, who differed in opinion from his master Valentine, with respect both to the number and nature of the The greater. cons. Another of these was the sect of the Secundians, whose chief Secundus, one of the principal followers of Valentine, maintained the doctrine of two eternal principles, viz. light and darkness, from whence arose the good and the evil that are observable in the universe. From the same source arose the sect of Heracleon, from whose writings Clemens and Origen have made many extracts; as also that of the Marcosians, whose leaders Marc and Colobarsus added many absurd fictions to those of Valentine; though it is certain, at the same time, that many errors were w It is proper to observe, for the information of those who desire a more copious account of the Valentinian heresy, that almost all the ancient writers have written upon this subject, especially Irenæus, Libro primo contra Hæres. Tertullian, in a particular treatise upon that matter; Clemens Alex. &c. Among the moderns, see Jo. Franc. Buddæus, Dissert. de hæresi Valentiniana, in his introduction to his history of the Hebrew philosophers, which dissertation gave occasion to many disputes concerning the origin of this heresy. Some of the mod. erns have endeavoured to reconcile, with reason, this obscure and absurd doctrine of the Valentinians. See, for this purpose, the following authors; Souverain Platonisme devoile, ch. viii. p. 68. Camp. Vitringa, Observ. Sacr. lib. i. cap. ii. p. 131. Beausobre, Histoire du Manicheisme, p. 548. Jac. Basnage, Hist. des Juifs, tom. iii. p. 729. Petr. Faydit, Eclaircissemens sur l'Hist. Ecclesiast. des deux premiers Siecles. How vain all such endeavours are, might easily be shown; nay, Valentine himself has determined the matter, by acknowledging that his doctrine is absolutely and entirely different from that of other christians. PART II. attributed to them, which they did not main. CENT. II. tain. I omit the mention of some other sects, to which the Valentinian heresy is said to have given rise. Whether, in reality, they all sprung from this source, is a question of a very doubtful kind, especially if we consider the errors into which the ancients have fallen, in tracing out the origin of the various sects that divided the church." siderable. XVIII. It is not necessary to take any particular The less con notice of the more obscure and less considerable of the gnostic sects, of which the ancient writers scarcely mention any thing but the name, and one or two of their distinguishing tenets. Such were the Adamites, who are said to have professed an exact imitation of the primitive state of innocence; the Cainites, who treated as saints, with the utmost marks of admiration and respect, Cain, Corah, Dathan, the inhabitants of Sodom, and even the traitor Judas. Such also were the Abelites, who entered into the bonds of matrimony, but neglected to fulfil its principal end, even the procreation of offspring; the Sethites, who honoured Seth in a particular manner, and looked upon him as the same person with Christ; the Florinians, who had Florinus and Blastus for their chiefs, and several * Marc did not certainly entertain all the opinions that are attributed to him. Those, however, which we are certain that he adopted, are sufficient to convince us that he was out of his senses. He maintained, among other crude fancies, that the plenitude and perfection of truth resided in the Greek alphabet; and alleges that, as the reason why Jesus Christ was called the Alpha and the Omega. y Concerning these sects, the reader will find something fuller in Irenæus, and the other ancient writers; and a yet more learned and satisfactory account in Grabe's Spicilegium Patr. et Hæreticor. § 2, p. 69, 82. There is an ample account of the Marcosians in Irenæus, Contr. Hær. lib. i. cap. xiv. p. 70. Here Dr. Mosheim has fallen into a slight inaccuracy, in confounding the opinions of these two heretics; since it is certain, that Blastus was for restoring the Jewish religion, and celebrated the pass PART II. CENT. II. others. It is highly probable, that the ancient doctors, deceived by the variety of names that distinguished the heretics, may with too much precipitation have divided one sect into many; nay, it may be further questioned, whether they have, at all times, represented accurately the nature and true meaning of several opinions concerning which they have written. Ophites. XIX. The Ophites, or Serpentinians, a ridiculous sort of heretics, who had for their leader a man called Euphrates, deserve not the lowest place among the Egyptian gnostics. This sect, which had its origin among the Jews, was of a more ancient date than the christian religion. A part of its followers embraced the gospel, while the other retained their primitive superstition, and from hence arose the division of the Ophites into christian and antichristian. The christian Ophites entertained almost the same fantastic opinions that were held by the other Egyptian gnostics, concerning the cons, the eternal matter, the creation of the world in opposition to the will of God, the rul ers of the seven planets that presided over this world, the tyranny of demiurge, and also concerning Christ united to the man Jesus, in order to destroy the empire of this usurper. But beside these, they maintained the following particular tenet, from whence also they received the name of Ophites, viz. " that the serpent, by which our first parents were deceived, was either Christ himself, or Sophia, concealed under the form of that animal;" and in consequence of this opinion, they are said to have nourished a certain number of serpents, which they looked upon as sacred, and to which they offered a sort of worship, a subordinate kind of divine honours. It was no difficult matter over on the fourteenth day; whereas Florinus was a Valentinian, and maintained the doctrine of the two principles, with other gnostic error. PART II. for those, who made a distinction between the Su- CENT. II preme Being and the creator of the world, and who looked upon every thing as divine, which was in opposition to demiurge, to fall into these extravagant notions. xx. The schisms and commotions that arose in Monarchians and Patropasthe church, from a mixture of the oriental and siams. Egyptian philosophy with the christian religion, were, in the second century, increased by those Grecian philosophers who embraced the doctrine of Christ. The christian doctrine, concerning the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and the two natures united in our blessed Saviour, were, by no means, reconcileable with the tenets of the sages and doctors of Greece, who therefore endeavoured to explain them in such a manner as to render them comprehensible. Praxeas, a man of genius and learning, began to propagate these explications at Rome, and was severely persecuted for the errors they contained. He denied any real distinction between the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and maintained that the Father, sole creator of all things, had united to himself the human nature of Christ. Hence his followers were called Monarchians, because of their denying a plurality of persons in the Deity; and also Patropassians, because, according to Tertullian's account, they believed that the Father was so intimately united with the man Christ, his son, that he suffered with him the anguish of an afflicted life, and the torments of an ignominious death, However ready many may have been to embrace this erroneous doctrine, it does not appear, that this sect formed to themselves a separate place of worship, or removed themselves from the ordinary: assemblies of christians.a Theodonts. XXI. An opinion highly resembling that now mentioned was, about the same time, professed at Artemon • Tertulliani, Lib. contra Praxeam; as also Petri Wesselingii Probabilia, cap. xxvi. p. 223. PART II. CENT. II. Rome by Theodotus, who, though a tanner, was a man of profound learning, and also by Artemas, or Artemon, from whom the sect of the Artemonites derived their origin. The accounts given of these two persons, by the ancient writers, are not only few in number, but are also extremely ambiguous and obscure. Their sentiments, however, as far as they can be collected from the best records, amount to this; "that, at the birth of the man Christ, a certain divine energy, or portion of the divine nature, and not the person of the Father, as Praxeas imagined, united itself to him." Hermogenes. It is impossible to decide with any degree of certainty which of the two was the most ancient, Theodotus, or Artemon; as also whether they both taught the same doctrine, or differed in their opinions. One thing, indeed, is certain, and that is, that the disciples of both applied the dictates of philosophy, and even the science of geometry, to the explication of the christian doctrine. XXII. A like attachment to the dictates of a presumptuous philosophy, induced Hermogenes, a painter by profession, to abandon the doctrine of Christianity concerning the origin of the world and the nature of the soul, and thus to raise new troubles in the church. Regarding matter as the fountain of all evil, he could not persuade himself that God had created it from nothing, by an almighty act of his will; and therefore he maintained, that the world, with whatever it contains, as also the souls of men, and other spirits, were formed by the Deity from an uncreated and eternal mass of corrupt matter. In this doctrine there were many intricate things, and it manifestly jarred with the opinions commonly received among christians relative to that difficult and almost unsearchable subject. How Hermogenes explained those doctrines of Christianity, which opposed his system, |