ancient heretics, who arose principally in the East, from the very origin of Christianity. It appears, from several passages in the sacred writings, that many persons were infected with the Gnostic heresy in the first century, though the sect did not render itself conspicuous, either for number or reputation, before the time of Hadrian, when some writers erroneously date its rise. The name is formed of the Latin gnósticus, and that from the Greek γνῶσις, knowing, a verbal derivative of γνῶσθαι, I know; and was adopted by the members of this sect, as if they were the only persons who had the true knowledge of Christianity. Accordingly, they looked upon all other Christians as simple, ignorant, and barbarous persons, who explained and interpreted the sacred writings in a too low, literal, and unifying signification.

At first the Gnostics were only the philosophers and wits of those times, who formed for themselves a peculiar system of theology, agreeably to the philosophy of Pythagoras and of Plato, to which they accommodated all their interpretations of Scripture. But Gnostics afterwards became a general name, comprehending different sects and parties of heretics, who appeared in the first centuries, and who, though they differed amongst themselves as to circumstances, yet all agreed in some common principles. They were such as corrupted the doctrine of the gospel by a profane intermixture with its divine truths of the tenets of the oriental philosophy concerning the origin of evil and the creation of the world. Such were the Valentinians, Simonians, Carpocratics, Nicolaitans, and others.

The denomination of Gnostics was also sometimes applied more particularly to the successors of the first Nicolaitans and Carpocratics in the second century. Such a desire to become thoroughly acquainted with their doctrines, reveries, and visions, may consult Irenæus, Tertullian, Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen, and Epiphanius, particularly the first of these writers, who narrates their opinions at large, and at the same time confutes them; indeed he dwells more expressly on the Valentinians than any other sort of Gnostics; but he shows the general principles upon which all their mistaken opinions were founded, and the method they followed in explaining Scripture. He accuses them of introducing into religion certain vain and ridiculous genealogies, that is, a kind of divine processions or emanations, which had no foundation except in their own wild imaginations.

In fact, the Gnostics admitted that these aeons or combinations were nowhere expressly delivered in the sacred writings; but insisted, at the same time, that Jesus Christ had intimated them in parables to such as could understand him. They built their theology not only upon the gospels and the epistles of St Paul, but also upon the law of Moses and the prophets. The writings of the latter were peculiarly serviceable to them, on account of the allegories and visions with which they abound, and which are capable of different interpretations; but their doctrine concerning the creation of the world by one or more inferior beings of an evil or imperfect nature, led them to deny the divine authority of those books of the Old Testament which contradicted this idle fiction, and filled them with abhorrence of the religion of Moses, who, they alleged, was actuated by the malignant author of this world, and resulted in his own glory and authority, not the real advantage of men. Their persuasion that evil resided in matter, its centre and source, made them treat the body with contempt, discourage marriage, and reject the doctrine of the resurrection of the body and its re-union with the immortal spirit. Their notion that malevolent genii preside over nature, and occasioned diseases and calamities, wars and desolations, induced them to apply themselves to the study of magic, in order to weaken the powers or to suspend the influence of their malignant agents.

The Gnostics considered Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and consequently inferior to the Father, as a being who came into the world for the rescue and happiness of miserable mortals, oppressed by matter and evil beings; but they rejected our Lord's humanity, upon the principle that everything corporeal is essentially and intrinsically evil; and hence the greater part of them denied the reality of his sufferings. They attached great value to the beginning of the gospel of St John, where they fancied they saw their aeons, or emanations, under the Word, Life, and the Light. They divided all nature into three kinds of beings, hylic or material, psychic or animal, pneumatic or spiritual. Upon the same principle they distinguished three sorts of men; material, animal, and spiritual. The first, who were material, and incapable of knowledge, inevitably perished, both soul and body; the third, such as the Gnostics themselves pretended to be, were all certainly saved; but the psychic, or animal, were intermediate between the two others, were capable either of being saved or damned, according to their good or evil actions.

With regard to their moral doctrines and conduct, they were much divided. The greater part of the sect adopted ascetic rules of life, recommended rigorous abstinence, and prescribed severe bodily mortifications, with the view of purifying and exalting the mind. Some, however, maintained that there was no moral difference in human actions, and thus confounding right and wrong, gave a loose rein to the passions, asserting the innocence of following blindly all their impulses, and of living according to their tumultuous dictates. They supported their opinions and practice by various authorities; some referred to fictitious apocryphal writings of Adam, Abraham, Zoroaster, Christ, and his apostles; others boasted that they had deduced their sentiments from certain doctrines of Christ which had been concealed from the vulgar; others affirmed that they had arrived at superior degrees of wisdom by innate vigour of mind; and others asserted that they were instructed in these mysterious parts of theological science by Theudas, a disciple of St Paul, and by Matthias, one of the friends of our Lord. The tenets of the ancient Gnostics were revived in Spain in the fourth century, by a sect called the Priscillianists.

The appellation of Gnostic sometimes also occurs in a good sense, in the writings of the ancient ecclesiastical authors, particularly those of Clemens Alexandrinus, who, in his book of his Gnostic, describes the characters and qualities of a perfect Christian. This point he labours in the seventh book of his Stromata, where he shows that none but a Gnostic or learned person has any true religion. He affirms, that were it possible for the knowledge of God to be separated from eternal salvation, the Gnostic would make no scruple in preferring the knowledge; and that if God would promise him impunity for doing anything he had once spoken against, or offer him heaven on those terms, he would never alter his measures. In this sense the father uses Gnostics, in opposition to the heretics of the same name; affirming that the true Gnostic is he who has grown old in the study of the Holy Scriptures, and who preserves the orthodox doctrine of the apostles and of the church; whereas the false Gnostic abandons all the apostolic traditions, imagining himself wiser than even the apostles. But the name of Gnostic, which was originally the most glorious, became at length infamous from the idle opinions and dissolute lives of the persons who affected it.