[1008] “Only the cultured,” he remarks, “can aspire to the summit and upwards; as for the vulgar crowd, they are bound down to common necessaries”; Enneads, II, ix, 9.
[1009] The Stoics began this allegorizing of the ancient books; see Zeller (Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, Lond., 1892) for an account of their conceits. Philo Judaeus performed a similar service for the Pentateuch, of which the Jews do not seem to have believed much literally in his day; nor, in fact, did the early Christian Fathers; see Origen, Comment. in Genesim, etc. He notices, amongst other things, the difficulty which arises from the production of light before the sun was created; Gen., i, 3, 16. Porphyry’s treatise on the Cave of the Nymphs (Odyssey, xiii, 102) remains to show the method of exegesis adopted by the Neoplatonists in order to demonstrate the divine inspiration of the old Greek poets. Kingsley’s novel, “Hypatia,” gives a good picture of Neoplatonism in some of its popular aspects.
[1010] A treatise emanating from the school of Iamblichus is extant, viz., The Mysteries of the Egyptians, an exposition supposed to be written by Abamon in answer to a sceptical letter from Porphyry to Anebo, assumed characters apparently. It includes a whole system of Neoplatonic magic and theurgy, and describes the various appearances of daemonic phantasms with the accuracy of one accustomed to be familiarly associated with them. Objectively the series descends from the celestial light which defines the personality of a god to a turbid fire indicative of the form of a lower daemon, perhaps of malignant propensities. There is a recent edition of this work in English, probably a venture addressed to spiritualistic circles.
[1011] Irenaeus, i, 23; Hippolytus, vi, 7, etc. His contests with St. Peter were a favourite subject in early Christian literature; see Ordericus Vitalis (ii, 2), who has extracted some amusing incidents as to their rivalry at Rome, etc. In the Clementine Homilies and Recognitions, which form a kind of religious novel, at the time put forward as genuine, he fills the stage as the villain of the piece, but is considered to be merely a pseudonym for St. Paul, a name which typified a policy to which the author of the composition was opposed. See the article on Simon in any comprehensive encyclopaedia of recent date.
[1012] Mansel’s Gnostic Heresies (1875) supersedes to a great extent the larger treatises of Matter and others, as it embodies a discussion of details more recently derived from Hippolytus, etc. Their sects increased rapidly in number, from the thirty-seven dealt with by Irenaeus (c. 185), to the eighty refuted by Epiphanius (c. 350). There were two main schools of Gnostics, the Syrian and the Alexandrian. The former was frankly dualistic, but the Egyptian assimilated Buddhistic notions, which saw in matter the essence of evil; only, however, when vitalized by the celestial emanations after they had become impoverished, as the result of their descent to an infinite distance from the throne of light. In general the attitude of Gnostics towards Christianity was rejection of the Jewish creator as an evil demiurge, and the acceptance of Jesus as an emissary from the god of love to rescue the world from sin and darkness. Their Christology was docetic; that is, the Saviour was merely a phantom who appeared suddenly on the banks of the Jordan, in the semblance of a man of mature age. Their greatest leader, though not a pure Gnostic, was Marcion of Pontus. His bible consisted of the Pauline Epistles, and a Gospel said to be Luke mutilated, but more justly recognized as an independent redaction of the primitive tradition. Marcion’s Jesus said, “I come not to fulfil the law, but to destroy it”; see Tertullian, Adv. Marcion, iv, 7, 9. The modern Christian might imagine that his faith is dualistic, owing to the power and prominence given to the devil, but such a view would be inexpiable heresy. Satan and his crew are merely rebellious angels, whose relations to Jehovah are similar to that of sinful men in general, so much so that some of the Fathers in the early Church held that Christ would descend into Hell to be crucified there a second time for the salvation of devils; see Origen, De Principiis, I, vi, 2, 3; Labbe, Concil. (1759), ix, 533, can. 7, etc.
[1013] Unless it should be maintained that Christianity germinated in Gnostic soil, the most vigorous growth which overshadowed and in the end annihilated its weaker associates, a not untenable hypothesis.
[1014] The two portly folios devoted to the history of Manichaeism (Amst., 1734), by Beausobre, must now be supplemented by more recent, though less extensive, works, owing to the activity of modern scholars among Oriental sources. St. Augustine was a Manichaean for eight years, and the most reliable details are to be collected from his writings after he became a Christian, and issued diatribes against his former teachers. Socrates gives a short life of Mani, fabulous in great part most likely; i, 22; the latest researches are those of Kessler. The best summary will be found in Harnack, Hist. of Dogma, iii, p. 317, to which is appended a bibliography of the subject.
[1015] An old Persian notion; see Xenophon, Cyropaedia, vi, 1.
[1016] “Not the devilish Messiah of the Jews, but a contemporaneous phantom Jesus, who neither suffered nor died”; Harnack, Encycl. Brit., sb. “Manichaeism.”
[1017] The text of his edict, with references to the sources, is given by Gieseler, Hist. Eccles., i, 61. The enactment, however, is regarded with suspicion, and is never mentioned unless accompanied by a query as to its genuineness. See also Haenel, Cod. Theod., 44*.