In St. Paul's Epistle to the Colossians (modern Khonus on the Lycus) he speaks of this devotion and of the attempts of a Gnostic sect to spread false doctrines on this point (Col. ii, 18).

The basis, indeed, of the Gnostic heresies of the second and third centuries was an allegorical interpretation of the Greek poets and philosophers and of the Scriptures.

For if it appears that it has something separate, together with impulsive and Gnostic enemies, yet at the same time it is bound in body, and has something inseparable from it; since it is notable to convert itself to itself, but its enemy is mingled with its subject.

For that there is a rational soul is evident: or has not every one a cosensation of himself, more clear or more obscure, when converted to himself in the attentions to and investigations of himself, and in the vital and Gnostic animadversions of himself?

Such then is the ascent to the highest God, according to the theology of Plato, venerably preserving his ineffable exemption from all things, and his transcendency, which cannot be circumscribed by any gnostic energy, and at the same time, unfolding the paths which lead upwards to him, and enkindling that luminous summit of the soul, by which she is conjoined with the incomprehensible one.

These forms beheld in divine natures possess a fabricative power, but with us they are only gnostic, and no longer demiurgic, through the defluxion of our wings, or degradation of our intellectual powers.

For in all such operations it manifestly subdues the irrational motions, both gnostic and appetitive, and absolves itself from them, as from things foreign to its nature.

They claimed the right of freedom exclusively for themselves from a non-Christian government; and it is hardly going too far to suspect that they would have applauded the government if it had suppressed the Gnostic sects whom they hated and calumniated.

Side by side rested a palaeolithic implement, a Chinese 'wise man,' a Gnostic gem, an amphora of Graeco-Etruscan work.

The allusions which Schwegler finds to the Gnostic heresies are explained when that critic at the end of his argument objects to the Epistle that it makes use of a number of writings 'the origin of which must be placed in the second century, such as the Acts, 1 Peter, the Epistles to the Philippians and to the Ephesians, and 1 Timothy.'

In Basilides the Gnostic we have the first of a chain of writers who, though not holding the orthodox tradition of doctrine, yet called themselves Christians (except under the stress of persecution) and used the Christian bookswhether or to what extent the extant documents of Christianity we must now endeavour to determine.

The term [Greek: euangelion] had a technical metaphysical sense in the Basilidian sect and was used to designate a part of the transcendental Gnostic revelations.

2. The case in regard to Valentinus, the next great Gnostic leader, who came forward about the year 140 A.D., is very similar to that of Basilides, though the balance of the argument is slightly altered.

[Endnote 198:1], that the references in Irenaeus can only be employed as evidence for the Gnostic usage between the years 185-195 A.D.

Not only does the author allow no time at all for Irenaeus to compose his own work, not only does he allow none for him to become acquainted with the Gnostic doctrines, and for those doctrines themselves to become consolidated and expressed in writing, but he goes so far as to make Irenaeus testify to a state of things five years at least, and very probably ten, in advance of the time at which he was himself writing!

I doubt whether a critic could be blamed who should go back ten years further, but we shall be keeping on the safe side if we take our terminus a quo as to which these Gnostic writings can be alleged in evidence at about the year 160.

Among the passages which received a specially Gnostic interpretation is Luke i. 35, 'The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: wherefore also the holy thing which is born (of thee) shall be called the Son of God.'

But if it was present in the copy made use of by the Gnostic writer, whoever he was, that copy must have been already far enough removed from the original to admit of this corruption; in other words, it has lineage enough to throw the original some way behind it.

They contrast his treatment of the evangelical tradition with that pursued by his fellow-Gnostic, Valentinus

The reading which Marcion had in xi. 22 is expressly stated to have been common to the Gnostic heretics generally.

How can it be thought that an Englishman, or a German, trained under and surrounded by the circumstances of the nineteenth century, should be able to thread all the mazes in the mind of a Gnostic or an Ebionite in the second?

These distinctions may seem over-subtle, but our meaning will surely be plain to anyone who will compare "The Faerie Queen," or the legend of St. George, with the Gnostic or Hindoo reveries, and the fantastic and truly Eastern interpretation of Scripture, which the European monks borrowed from Egypt.

It is also possible that we have here a development of some Gnostic conception which regarded the Holy Ghost as of feminine gender, as Semites would do;[A] instances of this change are to be found in the well-known Hymn of the Soul in the Acts of Thomas, in the Gospel to the Egyptians and elsewhere.

BARDE'SANIST (4 syl.), a follower of Barde'san, founder of a Gnostic sect in the second century.

PRISCILLIAN, a Spaniard of noble birth, who introduced a Gnostic and Manichæan heresy into Spain, and founded a sect called after him, and was put to death by the Emperor Maximius in 385; his followers were an idly speculative sect, who practised a rigidly ascetic style of life, and after being much calumniated did not survive him over 60 years.