CHAPTER XIV.

THE GNOSTICS AND THEIR BELIEFS.
Tue beliefs of the Gnostics are not by any means to be considered as shared by the present author, although he may seem to argue narrowly for them; or for them in certain apologetic shapes, or some free shape.
These philosophic outlines figure forth the foundation and abstract meanings, never to be taken literally, or brought too close home, of the Gnostic Left-Hand-side contemplation of Nature—a contemplation informed and illuminated, although reckoned apocryphal and heretical, and one which may, for reasons unfathomable’ in the philosophies, have been supernaturally suggested. Super- naturalism (that is, “ Nature made by some other thing than itself”) is undoubtedly true, although in the nature of things it cannot be reconciled with common sense. Common sense undoubtedly accepts, and must accept if it would be true to itself, the outside world, with which it is in contact every day; and this (truly) is the “world of things.” This phrase, the “world of things,” com- prises all that is meant in the world, of the “things of the senses.” All are “ ideas,”’ in fact—which is concep- tion, from moment to moment, and this parade of ideas is all that is really real. But this cogitation within our- selves, or thought, or picture, or whatever it be—or response to shadow from outside, or effect upon the sen- sorium—will by no means prove that we are really in contact with real things. This notion has been success-
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fully refuted by the profounder philosophers—even by the profounder realists, who, like Hume and others who believe with him, have sunk their metaphysical plummets the deepest into reality for a foundation, and who adopt the same obstinate processes of thinking out, or who, in other words, split divisions between things. Thus this question of the actual reality, or of the actual non-reality of anything being existent outside and out of man, has been left by them—wisely, in fact, because they could not avoid the conclusion without stultifying themselves, which in their natural, and still more in their acquired PRIDE, they were certainly very unwilling to do. Thus this grand question was left an open question—that is, a question so far “open” that one can, in metaphysic ingenuity, run any theory through it. It is built up, or rather it is placed there by itself, as the only reliable principle taking its spring from common sense, to be no more contradicted than “common sense.” Of a parallel with this certainty is the spontaneous irremovable know- ledge of a man who is comfortably confident that he has not been conjured into this world by magic, but has been born of his “mother,” and begotten of his “ father,” to use the rough expression, which is, after all, not true, because the father is only the representative of something else, and the generator is only a means, inasmuch as no one—out of the world—can call him the cause. In fact, there is nothing so mysterious as conception, “getting,” gestation, and birth, and all the mysterious phenomena which move along with each. Further on—in continued relation to these strange Gnostic subjects—we purpose to freely examine free subjects. And these subjects shall be as delicately treated (which we are sure the intelligent
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reader, by-and-by, will admit and confirm) as is possible, when the great aim of speaking to the point is to be attained. We have already too much verbiage and too few ideas in the world.
The treatise which we have in view is one certainly original. At first sight, the observations—or some of the observations—will seem very free. But we do not write for the ordinary kinds of readers, We do not write for the over-fastidious, nor for readers always prepared with their suspicions, particularly about our maintenance of what are called decencies. Our comments are not in- tended to be examined by the hypercritical or ultra- sensitive. For there is a false sensitiveness which is quite misplaced, and a false delicacy which is no delicacy at all, but only an ill-advised, self-distrustful, heavy, illiterate, shamefaced barbarism. Nature is nature, and nature will be nature to the end of the chapter. Try as we will to effect the elimination, that which is inseparable from nature will stick to it. And it will stick to it, sometimes, with more dangerous results after its elimination has been attempted. For in these peculiar cases it is not familiarity which breeds contempt, but familiarity which conduces to respect. For the means and the effect are so contra- dictory, and yet so grand; in the sense that whilst such and such things are ordered—such and such things are forbidden.
In all the matters treated of in this Book, in the mean- ing and purpose of art—such as music, particularly—the grand contention is, whether the world may be said to have sPRUNG—to apply the word thus—from feeling, or was CONSTRUCTED—Sso to describe the mythic making of nature—from science? In this distinction lies everything
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of philosophic abstraction in regard to the subjects “* Power,” and “Love,” as originators of the scheme of things. We may put the question in other words as a theosophic speculation, whether man—and therefore art— is from the head, or the heart? We think entirely the latter, in as far as “ Love” is greater than “ Wisdom,” and is its ruler. In this great fact of the superiority of “Tove” over “ Wisdom,” and in the well-known truth that the one dominates the other, it appears to us, lies all the hope of the world. Through wisdom—mystically— the world would never have been, ‘Through justice the world would never have been spared, and perpetuated. In the regard of justice, the world is naught. Mercy and love, combined and interfused, become “Immortal Pity,” and therefore the means of saving it; indeed, this “Immortal Pity” alone saves the world. Therefore—in the human sense—contrition: therefore, sacrifice: therefore, submission—“ like as little children:” these save it. “ Verily, verily, I say unto you, unless ye become as ‘little children’? ”——human pride and the vanity of science being trodden under foot by you—‘“ye shall, in no wise, see the kingdom of God.” To this possible relaxing of the sternness of punishment (Justice) and the punitive (there- fore cleansing) awards of Jehovah, the Saints penetrated. This means the “ Propitiation,” or the sacrifice of the _ “Saviour,” or of the sensitive, or sympathising, side of human nature, alarmed at pain, in immortal terror at the sufferings of humanity, and melting in pity at it; there- fore partaking of the pain, to invalidate the horrors of it, and resigning for the penalty, since that could be alone sufficient. In this emotion from the heart lies all religion, and all that we can know, of ourselves, of hope—of «
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hope for humanity in this earthly state, which is clearly penal, for some original, immortal sin, of the real nature of which Man can know nothing.
In the enthusiasm of devotion, God moved thereto, and permitting it, foregoing “ Wisdom” altogether, the human heart (not the HEAD, remember, the seat of the intelli- gence,) gives way, and pours itself instinctively out in pity—giving itself for that which it seeks to share, and, in sharing, to save. That the guilt and Fall of our First Parents, in mysterious ways, which we cannot understand, and for things and for crimes against God which we cannot understand, is true, and a real thing in the parade, and the possibilities, of that abstraction, Time, however impossible of belief in common sense, we make absolute account; in some mode, or manner, which it is impossible for the human race to understand, and which—in this earthly state—must ever transcend all possibility of the means of reaching. Christ’s immortal sadness at the world (which is a ruin) may be understood in some of these mystical. and remote senses. Christ’s self-sacrifice in it (and for it) induced by that immortal pity—angelic, godlike, since it is spread through the ages, and as it is commensurate with the expansion of the “ panoramas” of Time :—this can surely acquire justification, in faith, as a reality—if anything either in the world (or out of it) is real. Thence the “Garden of Agony.” Thence the record, in the words of the Scripture—‘-My soul is sad, even unto tears”—(of blood!) “My soul is sad, even unto Death!”
The writings of the great mystical master, Jacob Boehm, indicate all these phases and specialties of faith in a wonderfully subtle manner. He becomes a most
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engrossing writer when the attention upon him fixes in- tensely and his meaning has been gained ; which is no slight matter of attainment when the intricacy and the inherent obscurities of his style are considered. This illustrious man—whose writings and teachings are a puzzle to the Anglican Church, and, indeed, to all Christian Churches, whose professors are unable to rise to the heights of his spontaneous mystical sublimity, and who ignore him because they cannot understand him—was born in the year 1575, and died in 1624. His books—remarkable enough—are sought with the utmost avidity and curiosity by adepts, and the genuine editions are very difficult to be met with, particularly in English. Jacob Boehm’s Christian mysticism is, iz se and per se, pre-eminently catholic, but was disallowed by the Roman Catholics, although Boehm labours for the illustration of their chief dogmas, though not by their modes and in their own way. In all Christian respects, if (doubtless) with a Gnostic tinge, he labours grandly and zealously. Neverthe- less, Jacob Boehm, though personally a most submissive, unageressive man—-the simplest of the simple, the most innocent of the innocent—was followed up and _ perse- cuted, in spite of his appeals to the higher authorities, who always seemed to entertain some favourable doubt of whether he was right or whether he was wrong ; and he was greatly interrupted, distressed, and annoyed. Indeed, the ignorance, and consequent blind disregard, even amounting to aversion, of all the principal people, and the favourably-placed people, of the modern Protes- tant Church in this country, towards this strangely power- ful teacher are very remarkable, and very little to their credit. It is very strange, truly, that by a religion which
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is disclosed as ‘mspiring all enthusiasm, in the present exercise of the Christian religion in England, Jacob Boehm should be so much whispered down and so greatly dreaded. But the English, especially in the modern day, are very unimpressionable, cold, and impassive.
The mystic views propounded by Jacob Boehm in regard to the Christian scheme greatly resembled the profoundly metaphysical, far-off (stigmatised as visionary) ideas of Robert Fludd. It is impossible to suppose other than that in some form or by some means Robert Fludd was acquainted with the apocalyptic impressions and the deep religious dreaming of the great German mystic. We have innumerable proofs of this in a parallel con- sideration of the writings of both. Boehm wrote inspira- tionally—that is, altogether from the interior vision —and he wrote from the outside impossibilities into the inside possibilities. He was an uneducated man, a poor man, a lowly man. He had no scholarship, no learn- ing. Robert Fludd, on the contrary, was one of the most learned men of his time, with reading, scholarship, and experience widely extensive, and gathered up from all the erudite centres. There was all the difference in the world between the two great men—standing alone and un- approachable in their time in their thinking power—and yet their conclusions and notions were exactly the same, or, if they differed, differed only in degree.
A puzzle also exists in the history of Robert Fludd, the great English Rosicrucian, and the supposed founder, or discoverer, or revealer, or restorer (this latter would be the better meaning with which to invest the wonder) of Freemasonry, if we are to believe De Quincey’s account of the supposed origin of Freemasonry. ‘This
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puzzle arises, after all that appears as certainty, from the doubt whether there were not two Fludds; indeed, to come the closer in unexpected juxtaposition, eyen two Robert Fludds. Of this novel and singular problem in biographical identification, we offer the following solu- tion, derived from the Biographie Universelle, tom. xv., p- 10G, & supra.
“ Quelques bibliegraphes ont confondu Robert Flood (of Bersted, in Kent, in the Elizabethan time), avec un autre Robert, dominicain Anglais, né@ a York, et qui florissait dans le i4e siécle. Ce religieux avait fait aussi des re- cherches et laissé des écrits, sur les Mystéres de la Nature, ce qui Pavait fait surnommer ‘ PERSCRUTATOR’ (le Chercheur). ‘Fean Pits et ‘facques Echard, d’aprés Fean Leland, lui attribuent: DE iMPRESSIONIBUS AERIS; DE MIRABILIBUS ELEMENTORUM; DE MAGIA CERE- MONIALI; DE MYSTERIS SECRETORUM; ET COR- RECTORIUM ALCHYMIZ.” All these studies and sub- jects closely correspond, certainly, with those on account of which the real and undoubted Robert Fludd, or Flood, became justly famous. It is impossible to tell now who this first Robert Flood was, or whether he was, er was not, an ancestor of the second.
The sect called the Gnostics* included a large number
* The Gnostics: Classic and Medieval, by the Rev. C. W. King. London: 1865.
This work is a mere cold transcript of the historical side of the characteristics of the various orders of the famous and much-reprobated Gnostics. It is necessarily poor and insufficient in attempting to treat, with no knowledge, of the important mystic peculiarities which dis- tinguish these fanciful philosophers. The accounts of the Gnostics by this author, who wholly fails to grasp their meaning, are, of course, prejudiced, since he deals with the subject simply from the orthodox
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of professing Christians, and their doctrines were main- tained by a succession of professors—called by them apostles—who spread them so zealously abroad in diffe- rent parts of the Gentile world that in many places they were considered as the only people belonging to the religion of the Cross, and their conduct and beliefs the only rule by which its morality could be estimated. The Gnostics have left no account of themselves. They are known to have written some books, but the stream of time has brought down none to the present day. Their opinions, therefore, would have perished, perhaps, with themselves, many centuries ago, were they not preserved and embodied in the works of contemporary Christian writers. Irenzeus has detailed their doctrines, and Epi- phanius, who himself had been a Gnostic, relates their rites and practices. Besides these, several other fathers of the Church give an account of the lives and doctrines of the sect, with members of which they were personally acquainted. Some modern writers have taken up the cause of the Gnostics, and in various manners, and as cautiously as they could, have declared that they have been greatly misrepresented, and that many among those who claimed to be orthodox have in some instances, and
and academic standpoint. In a word, the Rev. C. W. King handles his great subject like most men of the Church when they write upon these matters—in a perfunctory, self-assured spirit. He criticises like a mere collector and comparer of medals, coins, gems, and so forth—a barren archeologist. ‘The book, however, is furnished with engravings of some of the best known talismans and gems of the Gnostics, more or less authentic and curious; but these illustraticns, instead of being well executed, are very rough and inelegant—a fatal fault to the force of these things. By such inconclusive means there was exhibited no knowledge of what is meant by these, in reality, wondrous tokens—the only revelation of the secret ideas of these strangely profound thinkers.
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because of prejudice and malevolence—instigated by fear of the powers of thought of the Gnostics—vilified them, and traduced their principles and designs, and that in other and more mischievous instances, they have failed utterly to understand them or to grasp their courage of aim and their directness of clear sight and reasoning. That the Gnostics were very ambitious thinkers, and philosophers of a profound and an extended range of investigation, there can be no doubt. In fact, some of their ideas alarmed the general mind, as laying the axe to the root of all authentic consciousness and re- sponsibility. They were accused of entertainmg dogmas which could not be worked with success in a world which was clearly never intended for aberration from standards, nor for the speculations which must ruinously result from the reveries of these strange men.
Some writers of the modern time, who bear the pious fathers of the Church no goodwill, seek every occasion to throw discredit upon the testimony of the ecclesiastical commentators upon the doctrines of the Gnostics, as they stand expressed or implied, avowed or suspected. Ac- cordingly these bolder writers represent the Gnostics, not as they are depicted by those who stand forward. as having seen or known them, but as men of high intel- lectual attainments, sublime in their views, rational in their opinions, and pure in their conversation. These dissentients to the accepted Christian ideas accuse the orthodox of arguing for a narrow Christian philosophy, and of assuming too low grounds—nay, of forming a total misconception of the true nature and veritable scope of the great Christian idea. They accuse the Christians, pure and simple, of a low-minded pureness, and truly of
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a simplicity, not simple in the large sense, but simple in the small sense. They say that the minds of these people are not lofty enough—they assert that ordinary Christians are incapable of viewing the true Christian ideas as abstractions, or of rising into real spirituality or transcen- dentalism. They maintain that ordinary theologians— in fact, that all who entertain a different opinion to those opinions to which they themselves profess to have attained —are full of conclusions derived from prejudice and incredulity, similar to the Scriptural “hardness of heart” which carries with it a parallel “hardness of the under- standing,” imputed to the oblivious and reluctant Hebrews —impatient, as not understanding what they were told. The famous Gnostic gems, the wonder and the puzzle of all commentators upon the mysteries of the Gnostics, are the only monuments the Gnostics themselves have trans- mitted of their daring imaginations and principles suspected in some quarters as licentious.
Some of the finest and grandest (not fine or grand in the sense of finish or execution, but in the ideas which they suggest—although only to the capable, which necessitates large knowledge—and of the sublime mysteries of which they: speak, and to which they are whispered to refer) are given, in reproduction, in this present work, and have been selected with the greatest care and with cautious judgment. ‘These are confidently submitted to the observation of those persons elevated in mind and of a philosophical and curious turn. But it must not be supposed that the execution of these Gnostic gems, or coins, or objects is necessarily beautiful or ex- cellent. In fact, in the majority of instances, it is quite the reverse. Some even, at first consideration of them,
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seem barbarous and unintelligible, being bewildering
and not answering to any apparently reasonable idea.
This may convince as all the more natural considering that the very purpose of these gems, or tokens, or marks, or coins is a matter of doubt and debate, and that they are most known as talismans and amulets, of course carrying the idea of charms and. spells, and bringing in the impressions of magic and magic speculations and supernatural powers, whether derived from holy or unholy sources, with them, and obtruding all this into the ordinary world of man, disturbing it with “ thoughts beyond the reaches of his soul.”
Thus the Gnostics have been always regarded as uncomfortable philosophers, truly, as their name implies, “knowing,” and perhaps “ knowing too much,” bringing a weight of mystery with them, and impressing us as those strange and unaccountable movers through the world, regarding whom history speaks with subdued breath and romance tells exciting tales—persons in regard of whom one walks out of the way, whose time of appearance is twilight, whose advent is pre-denoted by murmurs of thunder, whose movements are wayward, whose comings and goings are perplexing, whose address is fantastic and yet fearful, and who must be regarded with distrust, if not with apprehension and absolute suspicion. Such were the Gnostics—at all events, in the usual orthodox Christian view. Such were also those renowned, discredited characters, the Rosicrucians, in the popular idea. Thus it must always be with remark- able characters and great men.
These philosophers assumed the appellation of Gnostics | in the self-sufficient and enthusiastic belief. that they
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enjoyed a more intimate acquaintance with the Divine nature and a profounder insight into religious mysteries than was vouchsafed to the rest of the Christian world. . They were, almost without exception, of the Gentile race, and their principal founders seem to have been natives of Syria and Egypt. The paths of speculation being various and infinite, the Gnostics were imperceptibly divided into more than fifty particular sects, of which the most celebrated appear to have been the Basilideans, the Valentinians, and the Marcionites. ‘They first became conspicuous in the second century, after the death of the apostles, and under the reign of the Emperor Hadrian; they flourished during the third century, and were super- seded, for the most part, in their importance in the fourth or fifth. The Oriental philosophy was the principal fountain from which they drew their ideas. The rational soul, or conscious entity, according to that refining philosophy, was imprisoned in corrupt matter contrary to the will of the Supreme Being, and the world was subject to the dominion of a number of evil genii, or malignant spirits. To liberate the soul from her thral- dom and emancipate the human race from the tyranny of these demons, the Eastern sages expected the coming of an extraordinary messenger from the Most High. The followers of the Gnostic religion reduced the facts and doctrines of the Gospel into conformity with their Oriental tenets. Their notions concerning Jesus Christ were as follows:—They considered Him as the Son of God, but they denied both His deity and His humanity, the former because they identified Him with the visionary deliverer of their Eastern superstition, the latter because they held everything corporeal to be intrinsically and
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essentially evil. It was inconsistent with their ideas of the human body to believe that so impure a tabernacle ‘ was prepared for a good being, who came to destroy the empire of wicked spirits and restore the souls of men into a state of union with the great source from which they emanated. It was a farther result of their tenets with regard to matter that they rejected the doctrine of the resurrection, or the reunion of soul and body after death. The same deterrent and suspicious opinions led also to other irregular physiological conclusions. Some of the professors of the Gnostic form of belief were such particular and impossible purists that they looked with displeasure at the incitements of the flesh which led to propagation; and they failed to see the truth in Nature that the whole of the mechanical perfections of man’s body tend up to the securing of the completest success in this matter of the winning representatives, as also that woman’s form is expressly built up, converging at the waist evidently for the purpose of showing to what purpose the woman was constructed, the body of the woman incontestably foreshadowing, in its slopes upwards and downwards to the centre, the direct object to fortify, to sustain,.and to maintain for the bearing and the bring- ing forth of progeny. Wherefore comes all this pre- vision and all this mechanical exactness, combined with all-powerful allurements, if not for the one overriding and principal object—that of safeguard and perpetuation of the race? Nature presents this as the grand object, and, as it would seem, almost as the on/y object of life, not the individual being, the object of all begetting or repro- duction, but the simple fact of securing continuity; even as a sort of beautiful and grand punishment of “ waste :”
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this world being a sort of method of being, of purgatory or punishment for some nameless sins in some other place or state, the whole history and account of which, and the reasons for which, have been purposely hidden away from man’s knowledge, or have been lost. The reader will perceive that we are arguing that this world is not the proper world of man, and that, according to the ideas of the Buddhists, man is not in a proper world at all, but that he is the victim of the deceitful investments, visions in circles on circles, but yet real and material, as he takes them to be; man being “asleep,’ as it were, “ for thousands of years,” and being, in his historical periods and in his processes of sensation, ‘not in reality at all,” but only passing on unconsciously as the sport of the delusions of the inveterate “Maya.” ‘This was a strange, shadowy belief, but it was the real philosophy and the only one relied upon by the genuine Gnostics, and also closely assimilating to the profound metaphysical deduc- tions of the Buddhists, whose philosophy was precursory to that of the Platonists, everything originally, not only the religions, but the nations, coming from the East, and working gradually westwards, as if obeying a grand law of Nature, which should pass all phenomena in the way of the rolling of the world. The world was peopled west- ward. All civilisation has proceeded and intensified, in the course of the generations, westward; and progress has made its march with the sun. ‘Thus we are witnessing, perhaps, “the last rally” (so to use the word) of the over-elaborated and extravagant and debased hyper- civilisation of this “ Dispensation,” culminating oppres- sively, even offensively, in the uprising multitudinous centres of the “Far West” of the prodigious continents
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of the two Americas, stretching nearly from pole to pole on the Wes* board, and facing again that (metaphorically speaking) worm-eaten hive of old formal grandeurs and of the old scientific elaborations of ancientest and most fixed and fossilised civilisation—China, with its millions (with a far-off meaning) of curious microscopical creatures, a race, or races, which, in certain quaint senses, can hardly be pronounced human; at least as we Westerns understand humanity; the ingenuities of these marvellous Chinese being of that peculiar character that they seem short, even from their fixedness and finish, of perfection, and in their inexpansiveness and unimpulsiveness, of human. And yet—actually to say and to add to the wonder—in this monumental Cathay, which seems, from its foundation, to have worked through the eras in a sort of a dream as of a “tutelary toyshop,” socially and historically, or, as in the rigidities of a mythologised “ Noah’s Ark,” with all its princes and patriarchs, and all its animals and habitudes, really, in this old China, wherem—without meaning it as a joke—the quaint people seem, in the eternal iteration of their forms and manners and customs, to work back- wards, and not to beget sons as Nature seems to expect of the generations, but actually to give again the birth into the world of their grandfathers, acting under the dictates of a blind perverse mechanism—here, at the last margin of the world eastward, we encounter the most incontrovertible traces of the universal Phallicism, or worship and deification of the human apotheosised, sexual, magical “means” and “instruments” (made images and symbols of the gods). These we recognise in felicitous disguises, not only in the temples and at every corner. of the streets of every Chinese city and town, but mag-
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nificently and beautifully in the many-storied pagodas, dotted all over with tinkling bells; in che carvings and eaves and cornices, in the silks and strings, in the umbos and umbrellas, in all the embellishments throughout China, outdoors and indoors, inundated all over with every form of mythological zoology,—namely, renderings of dragon-bird, dragon-beast, or dragon-fish.
China seems to be populated and to be instinct, in the lively recollections of those happy travellers who have visited it, with eternal images lustrous in the gold of the grand golden Sun, or Dragon of Yellow Fire, recalling the one superb idolatry which may be specified as that of “ Be//s and the Dragon.” The Chinese pagodas are, in truth, no other than veritable Tors or Phalli, of the same character as those found all over the earth. All these speak the same story and convey the same meaning as the Irish Round Towers, as all the towers of India, as all the minarets of the Mahometans, as all the obelisks in Egypt and elsewhere, as the Great Pyramid—nay, all pyramids and pyramidical structures, as the rough single stones and corneds and cromlechs, and stone pillars and stone crosses, as the circles of stones, and groups of memorial stones, and votive stones, as the menhirs of Brittany, as the carns or cairns—as Carnac m the West of France, as Stonehenge and Abury, or Ave- bury, in England; as the universal “Tors” and archi- tectural rounds; nay, to sum up the whole parade of exemplars from the original “ Babel,” to the last church tower or spire raised yesterday in any part of the world, or from the “ pillow-stone’”—sacred and blessed—which the patriarch Jacob took and set on end as his “ pillar’”- stone, Or motive-mark, or altar of acknowledgment to
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Jehovah, when he “awoke from out of his dream,” and acknowledged with awe that “God had been there,” to the Western Steeples, even to the familiar western steeples of Saint Paul’s Cathedral in our own over- powering wilderness or world of a capital, this mighty metropolis, London.
As matter was evil in its nature, so, according to the Gnostics, it was evil in its source. The material world, in their system, was the creation of those bad genii who governed it; and the direct consequence of this notion was that they denied the divine authority of the Old Testament, whose account of the beginning of things was so totally repugnant to their peculiar theories. They even went so far as to view Moses, and the religion he taught, with abhorrence. In the God of the Jews they could discover none of the features of the wise and omni- potent Father of the Universe; and, accordingly, they degraded Him to a lower order of existence, sometimes even so low as the evil principle itself.
The moral doctrines of the Gnostics were of two kinds, and those diametrically opposite to each other. The lives of those of one class were austere and abstinent; they mortified and attenuated the body, in order to purify and elevate the mind, ‘The other class maintained that there was no moral difference between human actions. And, in conformity with this principle, they gave free course to their passions, and made religion itself minister to their sensual gratifications. These doctrines, apparently so opposite, had their origin in the same principle, operating on different characters and temperaments. The body being universally accounted the source and seat of evil, men of morose and stern dispositions sought -to reduce
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and combat it, as the natural enemy of the soul; while, on the other hand, persons of dissolute propensities were easily brought to believe that the deeds of the outward man had no relation whatever to the state of the inward, and that, consequently, the idea of moral restraint upon the former was absurd.
It may be doubtful whether the Gnostics of the rigid or those of the sensual school did most to prejudice the cause of Christianity in the eyes of the heathen world. The religion of the gospel is as far from being a code of austere discipline and rigid observances as it is from sanctioning the vices and passions of our corrupt nature.
We have said that the Gnostics first acquired celebrity in the second century; their first appearance, however, in ecclesiastical history belongs to an earlier date, and has been traced satisfactorily even so far back as the apostolic times. At the period when the gospel was first promulgated, the practice of magic, and the belief in the powers of certain men in this respect, was general in every part of the civilised world; and there cannot be a doubt that the more important nations had attained to the highest possible point of perfection, and of civilisation, in all the arts of living. The popular creed, and the highly-wrought imagination of the educated, the skilful, and the luxurious— nay, the notions of the speculators and the philosophers, in the necessities of things, and in the visible and believed abounding richness of nature—peopled all the regions conceivable, real and unreal, “earth, air, flood, and fire,” with certain influences and powers which could be appealed to, and managed and swayed, for good or for evil, by the proficient in the use of spells and charms, mystical sounds and emblems.
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The Egyptians were proverbial for cherishing these wild impressions of the possibilities of penetrating to and of holding commerce with the unknown, and of operating upon the true faculties of spirits and entities—more or less communicative, or disposed, or not indisposed, to be communicative, and even to benefit by traffic with men and women. ‘These degrees and orders of spirits were farther imagined to partake in the gift and endowment, or in the depravation and punishment by the Supreme Power—working through all matter by means of its representatives and ministers. These spirits were also supposed to be capable of human characteristics. The life of all nature was imagined to be conscious and pene- trative. ‘The senses were only the means of analysis of a general grand magic intelligence—an intelligence which, diffused through nature, was infiltrated through universal being, and operated in man in various influenced modes, in regard of which he was totally unaware of the spring or object ; nor could he guess whither he was drifting in the directions, and in the sinuosities of astrology—where the smallest should introduce to the greatest, and the greatest should bring about, and terminate and act in the smallest :—all obeying a certain extended supernatural scheme, of which man could surmise neither the par- ticular drift nor the general purpose. Nor was man equal, in his limited faculties, to guessing the meanings of nature—this being in the hands—not even of the inferior, but only of the high-placed gods, in the ascending chain of degrees even up to the Highest.
The Egyptians were proverbial for entertaining the most singular prepossessions in regard to being, fate, necessity, charms, science, and magic—this last, sinister
M
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and malevolent as exercised by the envious and malicious preternatural powers; as also good, rescuing, and bene- volent, when interposed, as a means of extrication, by the agents, or angels, of the great good genius, or merciful master of universal nature. We find, in the Acts of the Apostles, that the study of “curious arts” was common amongst the inhabitants of the most polished city of the East. It is not surprising, therefore, that many of the first converts to the Cross should have corrupted the purity of the new creed with a profane mixture of their ancient habits and ideas. Simon Magus is by many writers considered as the father of all the Gnostic heresies. He had been (or is assumed to have been) a wizard by profession; and so persuaded were the people that he was some extraordinary person that they affirmed him to be “the great power of God” (Acts viii. 9, 10). It is asserted that he was converted by Philip’s preaching, and that he believed and was baptised. However this may be, it is said of him that he relapsed soon after into his old ways, and we find that he is reported to have proffered money to Peter and John, to be endued, like them, with the power of working miracles. The terrible rebuke which this impious proposal met with brought him, for a season, to a penitent frame of mind. Here, however, the apostolic narrative leaves him; and, to complete his history, we must refer to other sources of information. We learn from Origen that he was at Rome during the persecutions under Nero; that he taught his followers that they might conform to the rites of Paganism without sin; and that, by this latitudinarian doctrine, he saved them from the cruelties perpetrated on their more con- scientious brethren. . (Origen adv. Celsum, lib. vi.) All
The Gnostics and their Beliefs. 163
that we know further of this personage favours the opinion of Mosheim, that he is rather to be placed amongst the open enemies of Christianity than in the number of those who corrupted and impaired it. (Mosheim, Eccles. Hist., vol. 1, p. 140.) In fact, he not only deserted the Christian religion (if, by the way, he ever joined it), but openly opposed it; nay, he went so far as to announce himself as the Saviour of the world. Nor was this enough. He is said to have asserted that he united in his own nature all the persons of the Trinity; in Samaria, his native country, he was the Father ; in Judzea, the Son; amongst the Gentiles, the Holy Spirit. (/renaus, lib. 1., c. 20. LEpiphanius,21.) All the enormities of this sup- posed magician need not be related; one, however, is too singular to be omitted:—he carried about with him a woman named “ Helena,” and announced her as the iden- tical person whose fatal beauty had occasioned the Trojan war. She had passed through a hundred transmigrations into her present form; she was the first conception, he said, of his own eternal mind (in a pre-state, that he recognised, of his own sentience) ; by her be had begotten angels and archangels; and by these had the world been created. ‘The disciples of Magus represented him in the form of Jupiter, and his female associate under that of Minerva (or “holy power,” producing, in magic, “ holy wisdom,” and both eventuating in visible forms, or forms of flesh). Some ideas of this sort are undoubtedly in- dicated in the first of those Gnostic amulets which after- wards became so varied and so mysterious. One of these Dr. Walsh thinks is likely to have been fabricated by the immediate followers of Simon Magus. The stone is chalcedony, and the sculpture rude. Jupiter, is repre-
164 Phallicism.
sented in armour, an image of victory in his hand, and the eagle and thunderbolt at his feet. On the reverse is an inscription which has not been explained. However, the ideas of all the Gnostics were suffused deeply and inextricably with Phallicism, and with the profundities and mysteries of Phallicism—which, in fact, 1s the golden key to unlock all the treasuries of the sacred controversialists, and the theologians and theosophists, and interpenetrates all the reveries of the philosophers of the deeply-thinking Gnostic order :—men who really did construct Christianity from the grand pomt of view. For the true Gnostics were philosophers who borrowed out of the “ extended spaces” (to use a figure) of “ sublimity,” and conjured the fires of the abstruser magic into the brightest lights, to illuminate the “structures” disclosed to the “ dreams”* of man from amidst them; to reveal to the wosld (albeit only for moments), in inspired recognition, the abode of the greater Divinities,* who vouchsafed the ‘Sensible Existence.” This “Sensible Existence” is to be accepted and imterpreted in the Buddhistic sense :—Buddhism. being the first, and the foundation of all the theologies, taking its stand (for earth, and for earthly comprehension) on Phallicism—celestial in the first mstance, terrestrial eventually ; and witnessed to in the architectural monu- ments of the whole world, in all ages, and amidst all peoples. This is seen in all the varieties of steeple, and tower and turret; all the forms of pyramid and obelisk ; all the secret symbols ventured by the sage builders; all the
* We must eliminate all ideas of indecency in regard to the Phallic convictions and the Phallic worship before we become qualified to take in, or even realise, the possibility of these ideas, which are undoubtedly strange and difficult of belief.
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** double-meaning” tokens and insignia hazarded in coins, talismans, and medals, All are talismans, recognised and “hailed” by the “knowing ones,” which pass, every day, as through the world unseen, and as if borne in the hands of an invisible army.
The singular arrangement of the letters in the Gnostic amulet or talisman, to which we have before made refe- rence, 1s supposed to be expressive of the coil of a serpent, that favourite Gnostic emblem, which is found in various forms and combinations upon most of their talismanie remains, and of which instances continually occur.
Menander, who appeared in the reign of Vespasian, had many disciples at Antioch. It appears, from the testimonies of Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Justin Martyr, that he pretended to be one of the goons, or benevolent prin- ciples, sent from the p/eroma, or heavenly habitation, to succour the souls that lay in bondage, and maintain them against the fraud and force of the demons who swayed the earth. As, therefore, he did not so much corrupt the religion which Christ taught, as set himself up in his place as a Redeemer sent from God, we must acquiesce in the opinion of Mosheim, that Menander, no more than Simon, is properly to be ranked among the Gnostics of the first century.
The claim, however, of the Nicolaitans to that appella- tion is undisputed. ‘These sectaries, who defiled the church at Pergamos, and whom Christ, by the mouth of his apostle, mentions with reprobation, are supposed to have derived their origin from Nicholas, one of the seven deacons, a proselyte of Antioch. The gross licentiousness of their practice we have upon the authority of the divine Saviour (Revelation ii. 6, 14, 15); their questionable
166 Phallicism.
opinions are testified by many of the fathers, Irenzeus, Tertullian, Clement, and others, who tell us that their belief embraced the doctrine of the good and evil prin- ciples—the gons, the origin of the world from the hands of inferior spirits, and generally all the ideas which have been mentioned as the prevailing tenets of the Gnostics. Their immorality is described to have been as revolting as their opinions were fantastical. They held sensual pleasure to be the true blessedness of man, and the great end for which he was created, The Nicolaitans soon lost the name of their founder, and branched out into a variety of new sects, all equally distinguished for extra- vagant principles and dissolute behaviour. It has been stated that the Gnostics were generally Gentiles. Ce- rinthus is an exception to this remark. He was by birth a Jew; and the religious scheme which he formed and promulgated was an amalgamation or combination of Christianity, Judaism, and the Oriental superstitions already described. The substance of this wild creed is thus given by Mosheim :—“ He taught that the Creator of this world, whom he considered also as the sovereign of the Jewish people, was a Being endowed with the greatest virtues, and derived his birth from the Supreme God; that this Being fell, by degrees, from his native virtue and primitive dignity; that the Supreme God, in consequence of this, determined to destroy his empire, and sent upon earth, for this purpose, one of the ever- happy and glorious wens, whose name was CuHristT; that this Curist chose for his habitation the person of Jesus, a man of the most illustrious sanctity and justice, the son of Joseph and Mary; and, descending in the form of a dove, entered into him while he was receiving the baptism
The Gnostics and their Beliefs. 167
of John ia the waters of Jordan; that Jesus, after his union with Christ, opposed himself with vigour to the God of the Jews, and was, by his instigation, seized and crucified by the Hebrew chiefs; that, when Jesus was taken captive, Christ ascended up on high, so that the man Jesus alone was subjected to the pains of an igno- minious death.” Cerinthus, farther, held the doctrine of the millennium: Christ, he maintained, would one day return upon earth, renew his former union with the man Jesus, and reign with his people for a thousand years. Such were the principal varieties of Gnosticism as it mani- fested itself in the first century.
Basilides, Carpocrates, and Valentine or Valentinian, are the most eminent names among the Egyptian Gnostics. Basilides was a native of Alexandria, and flourished about the year 125 of the Christian era. In the singularity and boldness of his doctrines he surpassed all his pre- decessors. In his theological system there was one Supreme God, from whose substance had issued seven glorious existences, or zons. Two of these zeons, Power and Wisdom, engendered the heavenly hierarchy, or the angels of the first order. From these was produced a new angelic generation, of a nature somewhat less exalted. This, in its turn, produced another, still lower in degree ; and every successive order created for itself a new heaven, until the number of celestial descents, and of their respec- tive heavens, amounted to three hundred and sixty-five. Over all these presided the Supreme God, whom Basilides hence called ABraxas, the letters of that word, according to the Greek method of numeration, representing the number 365. No term occurs more frequently than this upon the Gnostic gems.
168 | Phallicism.
We proceed to the account given by Basilides of the creation of the world. The lowest order of angels had built their heaven upon the confines of matter, or rather they had constructed it out of “ matter,” or “ darkness,” as the Rosicrucian theosophy framed the idea; “ dark- ness,” or “matter,” being the lees, siftings, or residuum, the “accursed subsidence” of the materials, out of which alone, according to the Rosicrucians, could be obtained the “ means” to construct the world, or “conjure up’?— for the whole of it is magic— nature.” The whole of the creation—according to the cabalistic speculators—was the result of the gigantic “ Rebellion in Heaven,” and was brought about by, and incident to, the conquest of the ambitious but overthrown adverse hierarchy, thus stripped of their first celestial glory of “light,” as the sons of God; which investing glory of “light” was then changed into the redness of the fierce “ fires” of the penal Hell—or place of dole and doom. These ideas—be it noted—are to be found, in some form or other, more or less refined—and therefore true—in every religion which was ever instituted under Heaven; therefore there can be no question with regard to their solidity, if real truth be a possibility at all:—-which is, after all, doubtful— for the components of truth can be taken to pieces, and scattered out of the only receptacle in which truth can find hold, or refuge—namely, in the human reason :—since, out of the human reason, there is not, there never was, nor can there ever be anything. For, take the reason, or rather the sense of “self? of the “ Man’ away, and the whole world disappears! The Gnostics were fully sen- sible of all this. They were the closest of the philo- sophers, who had hunted Nature out of all her secret
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places and resorts. They had come suddenly on Nature— surprising her as the mythological Actzon broke un- preparedly upon the sight of the matchless, awful splendour of beauty of the naked Diana. He had his reward in being marked, or “attired,” as the heralds call it, with the “horns ;” and the Gnostics, in a certain sense, and by a rough sort of figure, for coming upon Nature and detecting her—“ behind the scenes”—contriving her tricks, have been branded and pointed at, through the Christian generations, as the most awful of heretics, and the most flagitious of men—even magicians and reprobates, owning no allegiance, nor even admitting either God or devil. That this is erroneous we all may be assured. If any- thing, the error lay the other way; for the Gnostics peopled all space with spirits, and referred everything to enchantments, and to the wielders and workers of the enchantments—the Enchanters.
But to return to the ideas of the Gnostics concerning the creation. They asserted—mystically, of course— that it was the lower order of angels who built their heaven upon the confines of matter, and that they soon conceived the design of moulding it into a habitable globe, and creating a race of beings to people it. Animal life was all they had to communicate to their creatures; but God, approving their plan, added a reasonable soul; and mankind, thus created, became the absolute property of the spirits whose pleasure had first called it into existence. The links which connected this extremely bold scheme with the Christian dispensation were fashioned with the same apparently profane hardihood of invention. The angelic architects of the visible world became corrupted by their familiarity with matter; they had been ‘too con-
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versant with clay—the vapours of the earth went up and tarnished their bright essences ; hence, they fell from their heavenly character, and, waxing jealous of the Supreme Being, sought to diminish his glory and advance their own. ‘The true knowledge of his divine nature, which he had stamped upon the human mind, they sought to obliterate. Their hands were, also, against each other ; and they shook the nations with their contests for dominion. The fiercest and proudest of these degenerate spirits was the God of the Jewish people. It was principally to quell his turbulence, and overthrow his empire, that the Supreme (in compassion for mankind, which groaned under his sceptre) sent forth his Son, the chief of the @ons, who in- corporated himself with the man Jesus to execute his great commission. The demon deity prepared for his defence— his ministers went forth—the man Jesus fell into their hands and was put to death; but against Christ all their malice and fury spent themselves in vain. According to Irenzeus, Basilides denied the reality of Christ’s body, and held that Simon, of Cyrene, suffered in his stead. Mosheim is of opinion that some of his disciples, not himself, taught this doctrine. JBasilides did not invent, but adopted, the word ABraxas, which represented the chief deity of the Gnostics ; whose personality, and his attributes, are to be found indicated mystically upon every Gnostic gem. This mythic name—ABRAxas—repre- sented the number of days in the solar revolution; it stood, in the old symbolical language of Egypt, for the sun itself, the lord and governor of the heavens. From thence the Gnostics of that country transferred it to the God of their demi-pagan, demi-Christian, system.
The above account affords a comprehensive view of the
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Christianity of Basilides. He taught, moreover, the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of the soul, which he limited, however, to the spirits of wicked men ; and he imitated the Samian sage in another particular also, for he prescribed taciturnity to his followers.* Hence the figure of Silence is found upon many of the Gnostic gems. A facsimile is given of one of these talis- mans, imposing silence, in the collection of Lord. Strang- ford. Dr. Walsh notices it in his essay on the Gnostics. On one face of this coin is a female with a finger upon her lips; on the other appears the Egyptian deity, Anubis, with the head of a dog. The characters upon both faces are equally obscure.
Basilides and his followers entertained the most ex- travagant opinion of their superiority to all other Chris- tian sects in divine knowledge. ‘They only were men, and to hold communion with the rest of the world was to “cast their pearls before swine.” According to Origen and Ambrosius, Basilides composed a gospel to give greater weight and currency to his opimions. Gibbon informs us that the Gnostics of his school declined the palm of martyrdom. “Their reasons,” he adds, “ were singular and abstruse.” With respect to the morality of this great heretic, or rather of his doctrines, there exists considerable difference of opinion amongst the learned. The irregular lives of many of his disciples are, however, _beyond dispute. His son, Isodorus, composed a “ Treatise upon Morals,” which is spoken of by the fathers as “cloaca omnium impuritatum”—a sink of all uncleanness.
Carpocrates, also of Alexandria, may be judged of by the language of Baronius, who says that he shrinks from
* Eusebius.
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the recital of his tenets and practices as too shocking for Christian ears, “ob turpitudinem portentosam nimium et horribilem’—on account of their monstrous and revolting abominations. He differed from the sect of Basilides only in the bolder blasphemies of his creed and the far more enormous excesses of his practice. He and his disciples be- lieved themselves to resemble Christ inall things, except that they were infinitely more powerful, for the demons were subject to their enchantments and bound to serve them. His moral tenets not only permitted sensuality and crime, but recommended and inculcated them. Eternal salva- tion, he maintained, was only within the reach of those who had daringly filled up the measure of iniquity. Our lusts and appetites were implanted by God himself, and had, therefore, nothing criminal in them. The only sin was in opposing their impulses ; those who did so would be punished by the passage of their souls into other bodies ; those who obeyed their desires and passions would ascend above the angels to the bosom of God the Father. In support of these atrocious dogmas he was not backward to cite Scripture. The text, “Agree with thine adversary quickly, whilst thou art in the way with him, lest he deliver thee to the judge,” he interpreted as an injunction to yield to every carnal inclination. The practice of Carpocrates and his sect was not behind their doctrine. ‘Shall I blush only to tell what they do not blush to do” is the indignant expression of Epiphanius while he recites their almost incredible excesses. Their Pascal feast, the least foul and disgusting of their religious rites, is described as a banquet of obscenity and horror, The Ophites, or Serpentinians, present a remarkable variety of the Egyptian Gnostics. ‘They followed, in
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general, the system of Valentine, but they added the monstrous tenet that the serpent (from which they took their name) was either Christ Himself or Wisdom dis- guised in the form of the serpent. At first view it is difficult to conceive by what perversion of ideas so out- rageous a doctrine could have been invented or received. A little reflection, however, shows that it flowed easily from that part of the system which separated the Supreme Being from the creator of the world, and represented the latter as in rebellion against the former. The serpent, therefore, in tempting the mother of mankind, could not but be an object of ‘veneration, for by so doing he was shaking to its basis the kingdom of the Demiurge. We learn from Augustine and others that the Ophites were not content with the abstract worship of their grovelling divinity. ‘The serpent, we have already mentioned, was a favourite emblem of the Gnostics; whether Greek or Roman, African or Asiatic, they were equally disposed to adopt the figure of that mysterious creature and to render it as a princely potency, in the contemplative and visionary way, in their mystic schemes, all the nations of antiquity regarding it with similar feelings of awe and veneration. Accordingly no device is more common upon the Gnostic amulets.
Mosheim also mentions a Gnostic sect which held that the plenitude of divine truth resided in the Greek alpha- bet, and that on this account Jesus Christ was: designated the Alpha and Omega.
Saturninus, Cerdo, and Marcion were the chief apostles of the Asiatic Gnosticism, to which we proceed now to direct the reader’s attention. Saturninus was contempo- rary with St. Ignatius, and taught with great success at
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Antioch, He held the doctrine of two eternal principles, the one good, the other evil. The latter was identical with matter, and called the material principle, or that of darkness. Seven angels, who presided over the seven planets, were the architects of the world. When the work of creation was completed, the good principle smiled upon it and blessed it, and, as the first token of his favour, he gave a reasonable soul to the inhabitants of the new earth. He then parted it equally among the seven creat- ing angels, whose government was the natural construc- tion of the astrological system, by the means of the harmonious going of which, or the music of the spheres, according to the teaching of Pythagoras, the world was reduced, in the hands of the gods, into the beautiful order in which it has gone on growing and invigorating. Among — the seven creating angels was one who became the most powerful of all, and who was the God of the Hebrew people. This was the “Saturn” of the mythologists, and he was venerated among the Jews by the dedication to him of the seventh day, or the Sabbath—the “Saturday,” the «Saturn’s Day” amongst the Scandinavians. According to these dark myths the Sovereign Disposer of All Things, or the “ Supreme,” retained in His own hands the lordship, or the superiority of the “King of Kings,” over all. Had it depended upon the good principle alone, all mankind would have been wise and just, or this state of the world, or this world altogether, would have been im- possible, as roust, in the philosophic sense, be readily seen. The “Adversary,” however—or, in fact, “ DIFFERENCE” — “Two” instead of “ One”—happened to assert his power. The world, or “ The Word,” was “made flesh,” and had sunk under the law which had necessitated the fall, or
The Gnostics and their Beliefs. U5
the depravation, or the necessity of “the generations.” This was the origin of the moral difference which we see amongst men. Ages rolled on, and in the course of the immortal, theosophic, angelic history the angelic governors of the world at length fell from their allegiance and suffered the affairs of the earth to run into disorder. Then the Good Principle sent a Restorer, whose name was Christ, and who came arrayed in the semblance of a human body, to destroy the empire of the Principle of Evil, and to point out to virtuous souls the way by which they must return to whence they came. Saturninus was not a sensual Gnostic, His extraordinary ideas and his resolution chose the opposite extreme of continual penance and mortification. This was the way, he asserted, pointed out by Christ himself. The soul could return to God by no other process save abstinence from wine, meat, wed- lock—*“in short, everything,” says Mosheim, “that tends to sensual gratification or even bodily refreshment.” Rigid as the fanaticism of this man was, he gained many prose- lytes; but it is manifest how the truth of Christianity must have suffered from the ridicule and odium which fell upon those whose practice was not less abhorrent to the precepts of the Gospel than inconsistent with reason and injurious to society.
Marcion held the doctrine of the two eternal principles of good and evil, but he interpolated a deity of a mixed nature, who was the God of the Jews and the creator of the world, This intermediate being was at perpetual feud with the evil principle, whose empire covered all the earth, . except Judzea alone. Both the one and the other, how- ever, were actuated by a common animosity to the good principle, to whose throne they aspired, and they ambi-
176 Phallicism.
tiously endeavoured to reduce to vassalage all the souls of men, keeping them in a tedious and miserable captivity. Another sect called themselves Cainites, from their veneration for the character of Cain, who, they asserted, was the offspring of a more potent energy, and therefore predominated over Abel, who sprang from a weaker origin. Others took the name of Judas Iscariot, and held that apostate in the highest reverence. Others rioted still more wildly in depravity and profaneness. Having, in our introductory remarks, presented the reader with the most prominent features of the Gnostic heresies in general, we shall merely repeat here (to account for the origin of those gems of which some of the most remark- able specimens have been reproduced) that it was one of their most remarkable tenets that malevolent spirits ruled the world, presided over universal nature, and caused all the diseases and sufferings of humanity. By knowledge or science, they believed, these spirits could be controlled, their power suspended, and even their malevolence charmed to the use and benefit of man. Of this science they boasted themselves the masters; and it consisted chiefly in the efficacy of numbers and of certain myste- rious hieroglyphics and emblematic characters adopted
chiefly from the Egyptians.
The Indian Religions. 177