[586]. Justin Martyr was probably born 114, and martyred 165 A.D. For the passage quoted in text, see his First Apology, c. LXVI., where he mentions among other things that the devils set on the worshippers of Mithras to imitate the Christian Eucharist by celebrating a ceremony with bread and a cup of water.
[587]. Hatch, op. cit. p. 308. This visible change of the contents of the cup of water to the semblance of blood is described in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (p. 377, Copt.), and with more detail in the Bruce Papyrus. Cf. p. [183] infra.
[588]. Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος, p. 354, Copt.
[589]. Whether the author of the Pistis Sophia really intended to describe them may be doubted; but it is to be noted that the sacraments which Jesus is represented as celebrating in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος can hardly be they, although Jesus calls them in one place (p. 374, Copt.), “the mysteries of the light which remit sins, which themselves are appellations and names of light.” These are administered to the twelve disciples without distinction, and it is evident that the author of these books is quite unacquainted with any division into pneumatic and psychic, and knows nothing of the higher mysteries called in the Pistis Sophia proper “the mysteries of the Ineffable One” and “the mysteries of the First Mystery.” We should get over many difficulties if we supposed the two later books to be Marcosian in origin, but in any event they are later than the Pistis Sophia.
[590]. p. 246, Copt. So in the Manichaean text described in [Chapter XIII], Jesus is Himself called “the Tree of Knowledge.”
[591]. So Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 1, § 11, pp. 58, 54, Harvey: Ἐπαιδεύθησαν γὰρ τὰ ψυχικὰ οἱ ψυχικοὶ ἄνθρωποι, οἱ δι’ ἔργων καὶ πίστεως ψιλῆς βεβαιούμενοι, καὶ μὴ τὴν τελείαν γνῶσιν ἔχοντες· εἶναι δὲ τούτους ἀπὸ τῆς Ἐκκλησίας ἡμᾶς λέγουσι· διὸ καὶ ἡμῖν μὲν ἀναγκαῖον εἶναι τὴν ἀγαθὴν πρᾶξιν ἀποφαίνονται· ἄλλως γὰρ ἀδύνατον σωθῆναι. Αὐτοὺς δὲ μὴ διὰ πράξεως, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὸ φύσει πνευματικοὺς εἶναι, πάντῃ τε καὶ πάντως σωθήσεσθαι δογματίζουσιν. “For the psychic (animal) men are taught psychic things, they being made safe by works and by mere faith, and not having perfect knowledge. And they say that we of the Church are these people. Wherefore they declare that good deeds are necessary for us: for otherwise we could not be saved. But they decree that they themselves are entirely and in every thing saved, not by works, but because they are pneumatic (spiritual) by nature.”
[592]. p. 249, Copt.
[593]. p. 250, Copt. It is to be observed that these “cleansing mysteries” will only admit their recipients to the light of the Kingdom of Jesus—not to that of the First Mystery or of the Ineffable One.
[594]. As did perhaps the Manichaeans afterwards. See J.R.A.S. for January, 1913, and [Chap. XIII] infra.
[595]. So Charles Kingsley in Hypatia. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. IV. c. 60, n. 15, quotes a statement of Rufinus that there were nearly as many monks living in the deserts as citizens in the towns.