I would be borne and I would bear, etc.
The hymn concludes,
A way am I to thee, a wayfarer.[60]
Variants of the Hymn of Jesus are extant, one of which has been preserved by Augustine, the Hymn of the Priscillianists, which came to him from a correspondent in Spain.[61]
Hippolytus, whose Refutation of all Heresies has been mentioned in another connection, discusses the Gnostic sect of the Naasenes. He quotes one of their hymns, beginning,
The world’s producing law was Primal Mind,
in which Jesus is represented as the guide of mankind to the attainment of celestial knowledge.[62] The system of Valentinus, a Gnostic leader, is also discussed and a psalm of his authorship is quoted:
I behold all things suspended in air by spirit,
a didactic presentation of Gnostic thought.[63] It is composed in dactylic meter, affording another illustration of the adoption of popular rhythms in the hymnology of the heretical sects. A Gnostic hymn to the Highest God from a third century Coptic source may be cited:
Thou art alone the eternal and