His followers, however, improved, as they thought, upon this part of his scheme. They personified the longing of Wisdom, making it her offspring, comprising in it all the feelings of admiration and wonder, of sorrow, and fear, and perplexity, under which she had laboured[667]. They represent the Barrier personally, as sent down at the intercession of the Word or Only-begotten, and give him the appellations of the Stake or Cross, the Redeemer, the Limiter, the Reconciler[668]. They affirm that by his agency Wisdom was freed from the consequences of her vain search after her original, and restored to [pg 300] her spouse and to the Fulness, whilst her longing was separated from the Fulness[669].
At this crisis, to prevent another commotion amongst the Æons, by the will of the Supreme Father, the Mind or Only-begotten produced another pair, the Christ and the Holy Spirit; the former of whom gave them fully to understand that it was impossible to comprehend the First Cause, but that what could be comprehended of him was revealed in the Only-begotten, whom he taught them to contemplate[670]; whilst the latter put them all upon an equality with each other, and made them all, according to their sex, Minds, Words, Men, and Christs, or Truths, Lives, Churches, and Spirits. By this means they were reduced to a state of repose, and betook themselves to magnify the Great First Father. In token whereof they all united to produce one perfect being, Jesus, called also the Saviour, the Christ, the Word, and the All, together with angels his attendants[671].
But we must return to the personified Longing of Wisdom, whom we shall have to know henceforth under the name of Achamoth[672], which is merely a [pg 301] corruption of the Hebrew word for wisdom, חכמות, Chokmoth, or the same word in some kindred dialect, omitting the aspirate ח. She, it must be remembered, was separated from the Celestial Fulness by Ὅρος, the personal Barrier, the Σταυρὸς or Stake. But the Christ took pity on her, and reaching forth over the Barrier, (διὰ τοῦ Σταυροῦ ἐπεκταθεὶς, a strange perversion and accommodation of evangelical expressions to their system,) gave her a natural life, and left with her a savour of immortality, but did not communicate to her that knowledge, which in their system is the principle of spiritual life. What he did leave, however, worked its effect. It led her to seek after him who had deposited it in her, and being restrained by the Barrier, she sustained various feelings, sorrow, and fear, and consternation, all accompanied by ignorance of all above her, and a perpetual turning towards him who had given her life, and pleasure in thinking of the glimpse of light which had been permitted to her[673]. From the tumult within her sprung various productions; being however in the whole, the Creator of the world and all created things, of which we shall see more hereafter[674].
She had scarcely recovered from this state of perturbation, when the Christ sent down to her the [pg 302] Paraclete; not the offspring of Man and the Church, but that perfect being produced by the Æons conjointly, called likewise the Saviour[675], having power given him over all things below, and accompanied by his angels. He separated her from all the products of her perturbation, and endued her with that knowledge which before she possessed not. He likewise separated her productions definitely into two species of substance, one radically bad, the other capable of being either good or evil; the one material, the other animate; to which she speedily added another, spiritual in its nature, conceived from joyful contemplation of the angel-attendants of the Saviour[676].
From this period she begins to be herself an active fashioner of her productions. With the spiritual seed she could not meddle, because it was equal to herself: but from the animate[677] substance she first formed the actual Creator of all earthly things, called likewise God the Father, the Saviour, the King of [pg 303] all, the Mother's Father, the Fatherless[678]. By him she, or rather the Saviour through her, fashioned all things here below, from the two substances, animate and material: first the seven heavens, who are also seven angels[679], then the earth and man[680], and all the elements and creatures, and lastly the spirits of wickedness, of whom the prince of this world was the chief[681]. Of these man was a compound of the animate and the material[682]. All these the Creator made, not knowing what he did; and so his mother Achamoth, without his knowledge, infused into the man which he had made, that spiritual seed of which I have before spoken[683], which is the Church, (or rather the Calling, ἐκκλησία,) an image of the Ecclesia above[684].
It is not however to be supposed that all men have a share of this seed of election. It is only partially possessed. Those who have it not may be saved by faith and good works, those who have it are necessarily saved, and are incapable of being corrupted by any action or course of life. To the former class belong Churchmen, (Christians) to the latter [pg 304] Gnostics[685]. The natural consequences followed, such as I have detailed before, with more or less of disguise, according to the character or circumstances of the professors of such doctrines. Some did openly whatever they felt inclined to, others went more warily to work: but the result every where was the same, the free indulgence of the sensual passions, with all their lamentable consequences; and those so much the more fatal, as they were accompanied by a profession of superior knowledge and purity[686].
We have mentioned one Jesus already: but they likewise professed to believe in the Jesus of the Gospel. They taught that the Creator produced a son, unspiritual like himself, and that he was sent into the world by the Virgin Mary, as a mere vehicle, such as a water-pipe is to water; that he was[687] clad in a body different from that of others; that when he was baptized, the Jesus before mentioned descended upon him in the form of a dove; and that he was likewise impregnated by Achamoth with the spiritual seed. Of these four portions of his nature [pg 305] only the two former suffered; the Saviour having quitted him when he was delivered up to Pilate[688].
The winding up of this state of things is to take place when all the spiritual seed has become perfect in knowledge. Then Achamoth and the spiritual portion of every Gnostic will be elevated into the Fulness: the Creator, the animal souls of the Gnostics, with the souls of those who have been saved by faith and good works, will be raised to the intermediate heaven; and then the hidden fire will burst forth from this lower world and consume those souls which have not attained to salvation together with all material things, and with them will be reduced to nothing[689].
The most remarkable feature in the scheme of Valentinus was his treatment of the Scriptures. He did not, like some of his predecessors, speak with contempt of them, as having proceeded from an imperfect Being. He did not like others reject the whole New Testament, as a figment of the “natural men,” as they called the orthodox, and substitute apocryphal writings in their place: nor did he again, like others, reject such portions of the Scriptures as militated strongly against their views. He professed to receive the whole of the Gospels and Apostolical [pg 306] writings, but he accommodated the Scripture to his views. Tertullian indeed[690] uses very different terms; viz. that he did not accommodate the Scripture to his views, but his views to the Scripture. It was certainly his endeavour to appear so to do; and accordingly he adopted Scripture language to a very great extent, and no doubt professed, like all modern teachers of false doctrine, to find all his doctrine in the Scripture: so that I believe we have only one instance of his reading a passage differently from the Church[691]. Indeed he reproached the orthodox for not having preserved the true meaning: or rather looked down upon them as being naturally incapable of receiving it; being not spiritual, but natural and carnal.
It was, no doubt, in this way that he kept up that character for faith and piety, of which Epiphanius speaks, and to which Tertullian alludes[692]. Irenæus has given us numerous instances in which he and his followers quoted the Scriptures as supporting their own doctrine[693]: but they will be found to be either forced accommodations of numbers and names, or violent perversions of the letter of Scripture, or [pg 307] mystical interpretations put upon it in such a way as that it may almost be made to mean anything. The success of such interpretations was of course aided by the equally unnatural accommodations of Scripture customary with the orthodox, at least those of the Alexandrian school. There are, likewise, some fragments of his preserved by Clement of Alexandria[694], which have the same tone as the system generally; but one of these[695], in which he compares the heart occupied by divers evil passions to an inn or caravanserai defiled by travellers, appears at first sight so unobjectionable, that, out of the connection in which it stands, one should hardly suspect any evil meaning. It is however intended to teach the Gnostic tenet, that the heart of the spiritual man is no more a partaker of the evil wrought in it by evil spirits, than a caravanserai in the nuisances committed by every wanton traveller. This is evidently another, and a less offensive way of stating that to the spiritual mind no passion can communicate any permanent pollution, and that the elect are not to be called to account for what they fall into in this world: and its inoffensiveness at first sight is no bad illustration of the habit Irenæus charges them with of teaching their heresies by stealth[696].