GNOSTICS, (from the Greek γνωσκα, I know,) in church-history, Christian heretics so called; it being a name which almost all the ancient heretics affected to take, that they might express the new knowledge and extraordinary light to which they made pretensions.
St Epiphanius ascribes the origin of the Gnostics to Simon Magus; and says, that they acknowledged two principles, a good and a bad. They supposed there were eight different heavens, each of which was governed by its particular prince. The prince of the seventh heaven, whom they named Sabaoth, created the heavens and the earth, the six heavens below him, and a great number of angels. In the eighth heaven they placed their Barbelo or Barbero, whom they sometimes called the father, and sometimes the mother, of the universe. All the Gnostics distinguished the creator of the universe from God who made himself known to men by his son, whom they acknowledged to be the Christ. They denied that the Word was made flesh; and asserted that Jesus Christ was not born of the Virgin Mary; that he had a body only in appearance, and that he did not suffer in reality. They neither believed a resurrection nor a judgment to come; but imagined that those who had been instructed in their maxims would return into the world, and pass into the bodies of hogs, and other like animals. They had several apocryphal books, as the Gospel of St Philip; the Revelation of Adam; the Gospel of Perfection, &c.