The Gnostic speculations were, however, destined to pass out of the hands of unlearned men. Although it was hardly likely to have been noticed at the time, the day was past for national or particularist religions having for their object the well-being of one nation or city; and men’s relations to the Divine world were coming to be looked upon as a matter concerning the individual rather than the State. Alexander’s work in breaking down the barriers between people and people was beginning to bear fruit in the intellectual as it had already done in the political world, and the thoughtful were everywhere asking themselves, as Tertullian tells us, not only whence man and the world had come, but what was the meaning of the evil within the world[[290]]. Along with this, too, had come a general softening of manners which was extremely favourable to speculation on such subjects, and to which the vagaries of the Caesars of the Julian house have made us somewhat blind. A reign of terror might often exist among the great families in the capital under a jealous or suspicious Emperor, and the majority of the proletariat might there as in other large towns be entirely given up to the brutal or obscene amusements of the arena or the theatre. But in the provinces these things had little effect on the working of the system set up under the Empire; and the civilized world was for the first time, perhaps, in its history, beginning to feel the full benefits of good government and freedom from foreign invasion. It is quite true that the population were then, as at the present day, leaving the country and flocking into the towns, thereby acquiring new vices in addition to their old ones; but this also led, as town life must always do, to increased respect for the rights of their neighbours, and to the extension of the idea of law and order rather than of the right of the strongest as the governing principle of the universe. The Roman law, upon which the jurisprudence of every civilized country is still based, first took coherent shape in the reign of Hadrian; and Ulpian’s fundamental maxim that before the law all men are free and equal was founded on a conception of the rights of the individual very different from the Oriental notion that all subjects high and low were the chattels of the king.
In these circumstances, new ethical ideals had arisen which affected all classes in the State. As Sir Samuel Dill has said in his charming sketch of Roman manners under the Julian, Flavian and Antonine emperors, “It has perhaps been too little recognized that in the first and second centuries there was a great propaganda of pagan morality running parallel to the evangelism of the Church[[291]].” But this ethical propaganda was an entirely lay affair, and the work not of the priests but of the philosophers[[292]]. It had, indeed, always been so in the Hellenic world, and while we find it exciting no surprise that a priest of the most sacred mysteries should be worse instead of better than other men[[293]], it was the philosophers to whom was committed what was later called the care of souls. Thus Alexander had recourse, when prostrated by self-reproach after the killing of Clitus, to the ministrations of Anaxarchus, who endeavoured to console him with the sophism that kings are not to be judged like other men[[294]]. So, too, we hear of the Stoic philosopher, Musonius Rufus, when the army of Vespasian was besieging Rome, accompanying the Senate’s embassy to the troops of Antonius, and preaching to them at the risk of his life upon the blessings of peace and the horrors of war[[295]]. Seneca, also, when about to die, endeavours to stay his friends’ lamentations by reminding them of the “rules of conduct” by which alone they may expect consolation, and bequeaths to them the example of his life[[296]]; while the “Stoic saint,” Thrasea, when the sentence of death reaches him, is occupied in listening to a discourse of Demetrius the Cynic on the nature of the soul and its separation from the body[[297]]. This shows an attitude of mind very different from the merely magical or, as we should say, superstitious belief in the efficacy of spells and ceremonies; and the example of Epictetus bears witness that it was that of slaves as well as of senators.
Gnosticism, therefore, was bound to become ethical as well as gnostical, or, in other words, to insist on the efficacy of conduct as well as of knowledge, so soon as it came into contact with thinkers trained in philosophy. Where it did so, in the first instance, cannot be told with any degree of certainty; but all probability points to Alexandria as one of the places where the post-Christian Gnosticism first made alliance with philosophic learning. Not only was Alexandra the natural meeting-place of Greeks and Orientals, but it was at the early part of the IInd century a great deal more the centre of the intellectual world than either Athens or Rome. Although Ptolemy IX Physcon is said to have expelled from it the philosophers and scholars of the Museum, they seem to have returned shortly afterwards, and in the meantime their dispersion in the neighbouring cities and islands, where most of them must have supported themselves by teaching, probably did a good deal towards diffusing the taste for philosophy over a wider area than before. In Philo’s time, in particular, the Platonic philosophy had gained such a hold in the city that he, though a leader of the Jews, had had to assimilate it as best he might[[298]], and, as we have seen, to bring it more or less into harmony with the traditional beliefs of his own people. A century later we see the same thing occurring with the now rising sect of Christians; and a school of Christian philosophy was founded in Alexandria under the leadership of Pantaenus, the predecessor in office of the famous Clement of Alexandria[[299]]. If we may judge from the writings of this last, the expressed object of this school was to instil a knowledge of Greek literature and philosophy into Christian teachers, to bring about which it attempted to show that, while both philosophy and Christian theology alike aimed at the discovery of truth, the valuable parts of the philosophic doctrines were borrowed or derived from the writings held sacred by Jews and Christians[[300]]. Nor were the Alexandrians in the least likely to refuse a hearing to any new faith however wild. The leading place which Alexandria had gained among the markets of the world brought within its gates the adherents of every religion then known, and Jewish merchants and Christian artizans there mixed with Buddhist monks and fetish-worshippers from Central Asia, while the terms on which they met compelled a wide tolerance for one another’s opinions, and predisposed its citizens to a practical amalgam of several apparently conflicting creeds[[301]].
It was into this atmosphere that Gnosticism entered at least as early as the reign of Hadrian. Who was answerable for its first introduction there we have no means of knowing, nor do we even know with any certainty what form Egyptian Gnosticism first took[[302]]. One would imagine that the Hellenizing tendency of the Samaritans might have brought to Alexandria the doctrines of Simon Magus, but there is no direct evidence to that effect. The case is different with Antioch, where one Saturninus or Satornilus—the name is spelt differently by Irenaeus and Hippolytus—seems to have put forth, at the period referred to, a quasi-Christian system having some likeness to that of the Ophites, its chief distinguishing feature being its hatred of Judaism and its God, for whose overthrow it declared Christ to have been sent[[303]]. Like the Ophites, Saturninus rigidly opposed the commerce of the sexes, declaring marriage and generation to be alike the work of Satan, the declared enemy of the world-creating angels, and of their leader the God of the Jews[[304]]. But the followers of this Saturninus seem to have been few in number, and although all the later heresiologists preserved the memory of his teaching, it is probable that the sect itself did not long survive its founder[[305]]. Basilides, whose name is associated with that of Saturninus by Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Epiphanius, who all make him a fellow disciple with Saturninus of Menander, the continuator or successor of Simon Magus[[306]], certainly flourished under the same reign at Alexandria, where he taught an extremely complicated doctrine, declaring that between the unknown Father of All and this world there was interposed a series of 365 heavens corresponding in number to the days of the year, the chief of them being called Abraxas, the letters of which word have that numerical value[[307]]. This is the account of Irenaeus, not materially varied by any of the other early writers on heresy, with the exception of Hippolytus, who gives us a long account of the doctrine of Basilides and his son Isidore, which according to their own account they derived from Matthias, the Apostle who replaced Judas and who received it secretly from Jesus Himself[[308]]. From Hippolytus, we learn that Basilides’ complete or final teaching declared that there was a time when nothing existed—
“neither matter, nor substance, nor the Unsubstantial, nor simple, nor compound, nor the Intelligible, nor the Unintelligible, nor that which can be comprehended by the senses, nor that which cannot be so comprehended, nor man, nor angel, nor god, nor anything which can be named”—
and that this God-Who-Was-Not willed to make a world[[309]]. This act of volition, exercised in Hippolytus’ words “without will or mind or consciousness[[310]],” produced the Seed of the World which contained within itself all the future universe, as the grain of mustard-seed contains the roots, stem, branches, leaves, and innumerable other seeds of the future plant[[311]]. In this Seed was “a Sonhood, threefold in all things, of the same substance with the God-Who-Was-Not and generated from non-existing things[[312]].” Of this threefold Sonhood, one part was subtle or finely divided like aether or air, one coarser, and one which needed purification; and he goes on to describe how the finer part immediately upon the projection of the Seed, burst forth and flew upwards until it reached the Non-Existent-One, towards whom, Hippolytus says, “every nature strains,” on account of “its beauty and majesty[[313]].” The coarser part of the Sonhood attempted to imitate the first, but failed to do so until helped by the Holy Spirit who served it as the wing does the bird; but although the second Sonhood thereby attained beatitude, the Holy Spirit could not enter into the Godhead along with him “because it (or she) was of a different substance from him and had nothing of his nature[[314]].” She was therefore left near it, purified and sanctified by her contact with the Sonhood as a jar which has once contained perfume still preserves its savour[[315]]. As for the third Sonhood, it remained in the Seed of the World, which thereafter gave birth to the Great Archon or Ruler, who is the Demiurge or Architect of the Universe and fashions all cosmic things. This Archon makes out of the things below him a Son who by the arrangement of the God-Who-Was-Not is greater and wiser than himself, whence the Archon causes him to sit at his right hand[[316]]. This Son is in effect Christ, who reveals to the Archon the existence of the worlds above him, and sends the Gospel (here personified) into the world so that by it the third Sonhood might be purified and thus raised to union with the God-Who-Was-Not.
There is no need to follow further the system of Basilides, nor to describe the extremely complicated tangle of worlds, principalities, powers, and rulers, including the 365 heavens and their Archon or ruler Abraxas, which Basilides interposes between this earth and the Godhead. M. Amélineau has endeavoured to show that, in this, Basilides was borrowing from the ancient Egyptian religion which he imagines to have been still flourishing in the Egypt of the second Christian century[[317]]. It may be so; and, although M. Amélineau’s proofs seem hardly strong enough to bear the weight of the conclusions he would draw from them, it may be conceded that in the Ogdoad and the Hebdomad of which we hear so much in Hippolytus’ account of Basilides’ teaching, we have a distinct echo of the extraordinary arithmetic of the Pharaonic or old Egyptian theology, wherein we are constantly meeting with an Ennead or “company” of nine gods which, as M. Maspero has shown, sometimes consists of eight, sometimes of ten, and sometimes of a still more discrepant number of individuals[[318]]. But Basilides’ system was never intended for popular use; for he himself said, according to Irenaeus, that only one out of a thousand or two out of ten thousand could understand it, and that his disciples should keep their adherence to it strictly secret, seeking to know all things, but themselves remaining unknown[[319]]. Its interest for us here lies in the fact that Valentinus who transformed post-Christian Gnosticism, as will presently be seen, from an esoteric or mystical explanation of Pagan beliefs[[320]] into a form of Christianity able to compete seriously with the Catholic Church, was himself a native of Egypt, that he studied the Platonic philosophy in Alexandria[[321]], and that he must have resided there at the same time as Basilides, who was slightly older than he, and died before Valentinus’ doctrine was promulgated[[322]]. It is therefore hardly possible that Valentinus should not have known of Basilides’ teaching and have borrowed from it, even without the internal evidence of borrowing afforded by a comparison of the two systems[[323]]. The almost total silence of the Fathers as to Basilides’ school after that of Valentinus became famous is to be accounted for, as Matter points out, by supposing that the hearers of Basilides, probably few in number, came over to him in a body[[324]].
Basilides, therefore, forms a very important link between Simon Magus and the pre-Christian Gnostics—with whom Basilides was connected, as we have seen, through his master and Simon Magus’ successor Menander—on the one hand, and Valentinus on the other. But his teaching also explains to us why so many of the features of the Ophite doctrines also reappear in the Valentinian heresy. For the three Sonhoods of Basilides, although described in a fantastic and almost unintelligible way by Hippolytus, seem to correspond in idea with the First and Second Man and the Christos of the Naassene writer; while the Holy Spirit, who is of inferior essence and therefore remains below the Supreme Godhead, can hardly be distinguished from the Sophia or Prunicos who in the Ophite scheme plays so large a part in the work of the redemption of the light. The power of the Great Archon or Ruler of this World is also said in Hippolytus’ account of the Basilidean teaching, to rise no higher than the firmament, which was placed between the hypercosmic spaces where soared the Boundary Spirit, and the ordered universe[[325]],—a statement which strictly corresponds to the limit placed on the power and authority of the Ophite Ialdabaoth. The Archon of Basilides who must, I think, be intended for Yahweh the God of the Jews is, like Ialdabaoth, ignorant that there is anything above him[[326]]; and although he differs from his prototype in being better taught by his Son, this is easily explained by the higher position occupied by both Jews and Christians in Alexandria than in Phrygia. It is significant also that the mystic and probably cryptogrammatic name Caulacau which the Naassene writer uses for the Saviour of his system is applied to the corresponding person in the system of Basilides[[327]].
The popularity and success that attended Valentinus’ own teaching may be judged from the pains that the Fathers took to oppose it. The five books Against Heresies so often quoted above were written by Irenaeus with the avowed intention of refuting Valentinus’ disciples. Hippolytus, who aimed at a more encyclopaedic account of the heresies of his time, devotes more space to the Valentinian sect than to any other. Tertullian not only repeatedly gibes at them after his manner when treating of other matters, but composed a special book against them still extant, from which we learn of the existence of other treatises against them written by Justin Martyr, Miltiades a Christian sophist, and one Proculus, all which are now lost[[328]]. Those near to Valentinus in date seem hardly to have considered him an enemy of Christianity. Clement of Alexandria quotes several passages from the writings of him and his followers, and although it is always with the view of contradicting the statements of his fellow-countryman, he yet does so without any of the heat displayed by other controversialists[[329]]. On the other hand, the orthodox who wrote long after Valentinus was in his grave are most bitter against him. Epiphanius, who seldom had a good word for any one, calls him, with some justice, the chief of heretics[[330]]; Philaster of Brescia says he was more a follower of Pythagoras than of Christ, and that he led captive the souls of many[[331]]; Praedestinatus, that he and his followers throughout the East severely wounded the Church of God[[332]]; while Eusebius in his Life of Constantine produces an Imperial edict against the Valentinians and other heretics, issued, according to him, some time before the baptism of its promulgator, and ordering that they shall no longer be allowed to assemble together and that their “houses of prayer” shall be confiscated to the use of the Catholic Church[[333]]. It was probably in pursuance of some such law, which also enjoined, as Eusebius tells us, the search for and destruction of their writings, that a conventicle of the Valentinians at Callinicum on the Eastern frontier of the Empire was burned by the Christian mob headed by their bishop and monks in A.D. 388[[334]]. The same scenes were no doubt enacted in other parts of the Empire; and we may, perhaps, see in the fury of the persecutors the measure of their fear.
Yet there is little in the Valentinian doctrine as described by the Fathers to account for the popularity that it evidently attained. Valentinus, like all the Gnostics, believed in one Supreme Source of all things; but he from the first threw over the extremely philosophical idea of Basilides, which some writers would derive from Buddhism[[335]], of a non-existent God as the pinnacle of his system. To fill the gap thus left, he returned to the older conception of the Ophites, and postulated a Bythos or Deep as the origin of all. But this “Unknowable Father” was by no means the mere abstraction without direct action upon the world or man that he was in the systems of the Ophites and of Basilides. As to the mode of his action, however, a schism—or rather, a difference of opinion—early manifested itself among his followers. Some of them gave to Bythos a female consort called, as Irenaeus, and, following him, Tertullian, tell us, Silence (Σιγή) and Grace (Χάρις), from whom all the subsequent aeons or manifestations of the Godhead descended[[336]]. Irenaeus partly explains away this by the statement that Bythos or the Perfect Aeon dwelt for boundless ages in rest and solitude (ἡσυχίᾳ), but that there existed with him Ennoia or Thought. Whether this last part of the statement was or was not thrown in so as to force a parallel between the system of Valentinus and that of Simon Magus from whom the orthodox insisted all later heresiarchs derived their teaching, cannot now be said. But Hippolytus, who, while not disputing this derivation, is just as anxious to show that Valentinus was also much indebted to the Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy learned by him at Alexandria, tells us that there were other Valentinians who insisted that the Father (or Bythos) was without spouse (ἀσύζυγος) not feminine (ἄθηλυς) and lacking nothing (ἀπροσδεής); and that Valentinus himself said that Bythos was “unbegotten (ἀγέννητος) not subject to conditions of space or time, having no counsellor, nor any substance that could be comprehended by any figure of speech[[337]].” Herein either Hippolytus or Valentinus seems to have been attracted by the ideas of the Neo-Pythagorean school of Alexandria, who indulged in many arithmetical theories about the Monad or Final Unity which went on producing male and female (i.e. odd and even) numbers alternately until it arrived at the perfect harmony of ten[[338]]. Yet those who study ancient religions by the comparative method will be more inclined to see in this diversity of opinion among the Valentinians a hesitation between the old idea current, as we have seen, in the Eastern Mediterranean, that a god may be bisexual and therefore capable of producing descendants without female assistance and the ancient Semitic view (due perhaps to the fact that Semitic languages know only two genders) which divided the Godhead like everything else into male and female[[339]].