[170]. Vide “Gospel according to St. Mark,” in the revised edition printed for the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, 1881.
[171]. Vide “The Soldier’s Daughter,” in this number, by the Rev. T. G. Headley, and notice the desperate protest of this true Christian, against the literal acceptance of the “blood sacrifices,” “Atonement by blood,” etc., in the Church of England. The reaction begins: another sign of the times.
[172]. Thus while the three Synoptics display a combination of the pagan Greek and Jewish symbologies the Revelation is written in the mystery language of the Tanaïm—the relic of Egyptian and Chaldean wisdom—and St John’s Gospel is purely Gnostic.
[173]. “The claim of Christianity to possess Divine authority rests on the ignorant belief that the mystical Christ could and did become a Person, whereas the gnosis proves the corporeal Christ to be only a counterfeit[counterfeit] Presentment of the trans-corporeal man; consequently, historical portraiture is, and ever must be, a fatal mode of falsifying and discrediting the Spiritual Reality.” (G. Massey, “Gnostic and Historic Christianity.”)
[174]. This sentence analyzed means “Shall you, who in the beginning looked to the Christ-Spirit, now end by believing in a Christ of flesh,” or it means nothing. The verb ἐπιτελοῦμαι has not the meaning of “becoming perfect,” but of “ending by,” becoming so. Paul’s lifelong struggle with Peter and others, and what he himself tells of his vision of a Spiritual Christ and not of Jesus of Nazareth, as in the Acts—are so many proofs of this.
[175]. See “Supern. Relig.,” vol. ii., chap. “Basilides.”
[176]. It was asked in “Isis Unveiled,” were not the views of the Phrygian Bishop Montanus, also deemed a HERESY by the Church of Rome? It is quite extraordinary to see how easily that Church encourages the abuse of one heretic, Tertullian, against another heretic, Basilides, when the abuse happens to further her own object.
[177]. Does not Paul himself speak of “Principalities and Powers in heavenly places” (Ephesians iii. 10; i. 21), and confess that there be gods many and Lords many (Kurioi)? And angels, powers (Dunameis), and Principalities? (See 1 Corinthians, viii. 5; and Epistle to Romans, viii. 38.)
[178]. Tertullian: “Præscript.” It is undeniably owing only to a remarkably casuistical, sleight-of-hand-like argument that Jehovah, who in the Kabala is simply a Sephiroth, the third, left-hand power among the Emanations (Binah), has been elevated to the dignity of the One absolute God. Even in the Bible he is but one of the Elohim (See Genesis, chapter iii. v. 22. “The Lord God” making no difference between himself and others.)
[179]. This is history. How far that re-writing of, and tampering with, the primitive gnostic fragments which are now become the New Testament, went, may be inferred by reading “Supernatural Religion,” which went through over twenty-three editions, if I mistake not. The host of authorities for it given by the author, is simply appalling. The list of the English and German Bible critics alone seems endless.