ation of His being, but which is the source of all perfectionthe mother which receives the germs of His creation. The first manifestation which the thought of the Supreme Being produced was mind. In the allegorical language of the Valentinians, thought was impregnated by the Bythos, and thus was produced mind the only begotten Son of the Supreme. Bythos is thus masculine; at other times masculo-feminine, as when regarded as in a state of unity with thought. Bythos and thought have their counterpart in the Ammon and Neith of the Egyptians. Mind is the first manifestation of the powers of God-the first of the Æons, the beginning of all things. By it Divinity is revealed; for without the act which give it existence, all things would remain buried in the Bythos. The Eons are but the more complete revelation of God. They are the forms of the great Being, the names of Him, whose perfections no name can express the names of the nameless One. Of these ons, some are masculine, and some are feminine. The feminine is the analogue of the masculine; so that the Ogdoad becomes a Tetrad, and can be reduced to these:-Bythos, Mind, Word, Man.

In the Bythos, all things are one. As it unfolds itself there result antitheses, which are formed through all degrees of existence. But these are antitheses of like kinds; syzygies, or unions; copies of Bythos and thought. The one is the complement of the other. The first of the two is the male, the active or forming principle; the second, the feminine, or passive principle. From their union result other Eons, which are the images of these. The union of all Eons forms the Pleroma* or fulness of the divine nature, the plenitude of the

*The Tetrad, consists of the Bythos (abyss,) Nous (mind,) Logos (speech,) Anthropos (man.) In the Bythos, all is one, its manifestations constitute the degrees of existence; the four which make the Tetrad, with their syzygies, make the Ogdoad. The syzygy of Bythos is Ennoia (thought,) sometimes call Sigé (silence,) and Arreton (the unspeakable,) the syzygy of Nous is Aletheia (truth.) These four, make the first Tetrad of the Ogdoad, the Syzygy of Logos is Zoé (life,) and that of Anthropos, Ekklesia, (the Church.) These form the second Tetrad. From Bythos proceeds Horos (limitation,) the Eon sent to teach the last of the Eons, (Sophia,) that she could not be united to the Bythos. The desire to know the Bythos, and to return to it, which had seized Sophia, possessed all the Eons, which troubled the harmony of the Pleroma. To finish the work begun by Horos, the Nous engendered Christos, and His companion Pneuma (spirit.) From Logos and Zoé emanate a decade of Eons; Bythios (of the nature of Bythos,) Ageratos (the ageless,) Autophyes, (self-produced,) Akinetos (the immoveable,) and Monogenes (the only begotten,) with their syzygies, Mixis (alliance,) Henosis (union,) Hedone (pleasure,) Synkrasis (moderation,) Makaria (blessedness.) From

attributes and perfections of Him, whom no man can know, save the only begotten Son.

All the manifestations of God were pure, and reflected the rays of His divine attributes. But the Eons were not equal in perfection. The more their rank separated them from God, the less they knew Him and the nearer they were to imperfection; yea, they reached imperfection, and of necessity there was degeneracy, or as it is otherwise called, a fall. The Eons that were distant from God, were animated by a vehement desire to know Him; but this was impossible. Eternal silence, which means an impossibility in the nature of things, prevented their attaining this knowledge. The harmony of the Pleroma was troubled; there was need of a restoration, of a deliverance from the fall. This deliverance was wrought by Christ.

This Pleroma, this fall and deliverance, only concerned the the celestial or intelligible world; but the inferior or terrestial world is a copy of the celestial; and though outside of the Pleroma what took place in the celestial had its counterpart in the terrestial. Jesus did for the inferior world what Christ did for the Pleroma, as the only begotten. He was the firstborn of creation, and spread throughout all existence placed outside of the Pleroma the germs of the divine life, which He embraced in His own person.

There was a manifest contradiction in speaking of a Pleroma or fulness, which contained the all of being, and then assuming the existence of matter outside of the Pleroma. But the Valentinians had a ready answer. Though the Father of all things, they said, contain all, and nothing is beyond the Pleroma, yet "inside of" and "outside of " are only words adapted to our knowledge or our ignorance, having no reference to space or distance. And when they spoke of matter beyond the Pleroma, they explained matter as the philosophers had done before them; as not a real existence, but the necessary bounds between being and non-being, a negative something between that which is and that which is not. The existence of a pnrely divine, and a divine mingled with matter, required Valentinus to acknowledge, in the creative wisdom of God, a two-fold being, a higher and

a

Anthropos and Ekklesia emanate a duodecade; Parakletos (comforter,) and Pistis (faith,) Patrikos (paternal,) and Elpis (hope,) Metrikos (the metrical,) and Agape (love,) Aeinous (eternal mind,) and Synesis (intelligeuce,) Ekklesiasticos (belonging to the church,) and Makariotes (the blissful) Theletos (will) and Sophia (wisdom,) last of all, the Eon Jesus, who united in himself, all the good of all the Eons.

lower wisdom. The latter is the soul of the world, the immature Eon in its progress to perfection. From the mingling of this Eon with matter, spring all living existences, in gradations without number; higher in proportion as they are free from matter, and lower the more they are in contact with it.

The doctrines of Basilides and Valentinus, under different modifications, were held by all the sects of Egyptian Gnostics, both of the great and the small schools. Neander says "There were some among this kind of Gnostics who carried their Pantheism through with more consistency. They held that the same soul is diffused through all living and inanimate nature; and that, consequently, all, wherever it is dispersed and confined by the bonds of matter within the limits of individual existence, should at length be absorbed by the world-soul or wisdom, the original source whence it flowed. Such Gnostics, said, 'when we take things for food we absorb the soul, scattered and dispersed in them, into our own being, and with ourselves cary them upward to the original fountain.' Thus, eating and drinking were for them a kind of worship." In an apocryphal gospel of this sect the world-soul or supreme Being says to the initiated, "Thou art I and I am thou; where thou art I am, and I am diffused through all. Where thou pleasest thou canst gather me, but in gathering me thou gatherest thyself." Dorner says, "Epiphanius relates of the Gnostics of Egypt, what proves that they were in part given to a Nature-Pantheism. They called the quickening powers of nature, Christ. Those who believed that they had measured the entire circle of nature-life, and had collected and offered all power, said 'I am Christ.'” †

*The gospel of Eve-The sect, the Ophites.

†The Marcionites who in Matter's classfication are the fifth group of Gnostics belonged to Asia Minor and Italy. There in nothing in their doctrines to require any particular notice here. The Clementines represented rather the opinions of an individual than a sect. Their fundamental definition of God is that He is a pure Being, rest, and out of Him, is only nothing. As Being He is the all. The world including man stands over against Being as the vacuum which is to be filled by Him who IS. God is good and especially righteous. This imposes the nescessity of thinking God as personal. God viewed in Himself is eternally united with wisdom as His spirit and His effulgent body. But His manifestation is a movement of God Himself flowing forth in the double act of expansion and contraction of Himself of which the heart of man is the type, the wisdom, the spirit or word of God is the eternally oustretched hand which completes the manifestation and forms the world. The world of revelation is God unfolding Himself. There are six acts of selfexpansion which comprehend the six world epochs which, in the seventh, find their point of rest in God. God is the eternal Sabbath and the moveless Centre. But though the world is a communication of His essence

a

MANICHEISM.-After Gnosticism, the other great philosophical heresy was the Church of the Manichees. Manes, the founder of this sect, before he embraced Christianity, had lived long among the Persian Magi, and had acquired a great reputation for all kinds of learning. "The idea," Matter says, which governs all his system, is Pantheism; which, more or less, pervades all the schools of the Gnosis; which he however derived from other quarters; doubtless, from its original source in the regions of India and China, which he had visited, in order to satisfy his ardor for theological speculation." According to Manes, the cause of all that which exists is in God; but in the last analysis, God is all. All souls are equal. God is in all. This divine life is not limited to man and animals, it is the same in plants. But the Pantheism of Manes was modified by the dualism of Zoroaster. The kingdoms of light and darkness, spirit and matter, had long contended. Each had its Eons or demons, under the leadership of their chief, as in the kingdoms of Ormuzd and Ahriman. At one time, the kingdom of darkness seemed likely to overcome; but the chief of the kingdom of light, seeing the danger, created a power which he placed in the front of the heavens, to protect the Eons, and to destroy the kingdom of darkness or evil. This power was the mother of life-the soul of the world-the divine principle, which indirectly enters into relation with the material world, to correct its evil nature. As a direct emanation of the Supreme, it is too pure to come into contact with matter. It remains on the bounds of the superior region. But the mother of life bore a Son, who is her image; this Son is the first or celestial man. He fights with the powers of darkness, but he is in danger of being conquered and of falling into the empire of darkness; but the ruler of the light kingdom, sends the living spirit to deliver him. He is delivered; but part of his armour or light which, in the Eastern allegory, is called his son, has been devoured by the princes of the kingdom of darkness.

The succession, then, of the first beings of the empire of light, is this;-The good God, the mother of life, the first man the son of man or Jesus Christ and the living spirit. The Mother of life, who is the general principle of divine life, and the first man are too elevated to be allied with the empire of

momentum of the Monad God in His inner Being remains unchanged. He is personal but He is also Being. Christ, the eternal prophet of truth, is manifested in Adam, Enoch, and Jesus.

JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA.

129

darkness. The Son of man is the germ of the divine life which according to the language of the Gnosis enters the empire, and ends by tempering it or purifying it from its savage nature. The deliverance of the celestial ray which is in the empire of matter and its return into the bosom of perfection constitute the end and destiny of all visible existence. This end once reached, the world will cease to be.

The visible Adam was created in the image of the first man. His soul was light and his body matter and thus he belonged to both kingdoms. Had he obeyed the commandment not to eat of the forbidden fruit, he would have been freed ultimately from the kingdom of darkness, but an angel of light tempted him to disobey. The demons produced Eve whose personal charms seduced him from the spiritual and plunged him into the sensual. What happened at the creation of the world is repeated by the generation of every human being. The blind forces of matter and darkness are confounded, and enchain the soul which seeks deliverance. Man is enchained of fate by this act which has given him existence, and which always gives him up weaker to the powers of sense and the charms of the terrestrial world.

JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA.-It is not with the full permission of the Catholic Church, that we place among heretics the name of John Scotus Erigena. Until the year 1583, both the French and English martyrologers celebrated him as a holy martyr, and since the republication of his works in Germany, many Catholic theologians of that country claim him as a sound Catholic. He certainly lived and died in the communion of the Church of Rome was perhaps on Abbot and therefore probably a priest, though evidence is wanting to establish the certainty of this. He first appears in history in a controversy on predestination. Godescalcus a Saxon monk, had incurred the displeasure of the Archbishop of Rheims, by teaching that God's predestination was two-fold; one of the good to eternal blessedness and the other of the reprobate to eternal condemnation. Erigena espoused the side of the Archbishop, maintaining that God out of His everlasting love had predestined all men to eternal life. The controversy became so important that an appeal was made to Rome. Nicholas I. approved of the doctrine of Godescalcus and tried to check the "poisonous" dogmas of Erigena; "nevertheless" adds his German Catholic biographer with a feeling of triumph, "Erigena himself was not condemned." At the request of Charles the Bald, Erigena translated into Latin the works of S. Dionysius the Areopagite. This again exposed him to the

K