come to any other conclusion upon the subject. We must not deny that some of the Fathers have also charged him with falling into vicious habits, and thus affording too true a support to the heretics who claimed him as their leader. These writers however are of a late date; and some, who are much more ancient, have entirely acquitted him, and furnished an explanation of the calumnies, which attach to his name. At this distance of time we can only weigh testimony and probabilities: there is at least no harm in hoping, that the faith of so many Christians was not destroyed by the altered doctrine or vicious example of one, who had helped to sow the first seeds of the gospel, and nursed it with a parent's care. We know that the Gnostics were not ashamed to claim as their founders the apostles, or friends of the apostles. These same Nicolaitans are stated to have quoted a saying of Matthias in support of their opinions. The followers of Marcion and Valentinus professed also to hold the doctrine of Matthias": those of Basilides laid claim to the same apostle, or to Glaucias, who, they said, was interpreter to St. Petery. Valentinus boasted also of having heard Theudas, an acquantance of St. Paul'. At a much later period Manes was said to have succeeded Buddas, who was the disciple of Scythianus, a contemporary of the apostles. The latter story is not even chronologically possible: and it may be observed in all these cases, that the heretics claimed connexion

either with persons, of whom the New Testament mentions only the names; or who are not recorded at all in the apostolic writings. The same may have been the case with Nicolas the Deacon: and though I allow, that if the Nicolaitans were distinguished as a sect some time before the end of the century, the probability is lessened that his name was thus abused; yet if his career was a short one, his history, like that of the other Deacons, would soon be forgotten: and the same fertile invention, which gave rise in the two first centuries to so many apocryphal gospels, may also have led the Nicolaitans to give a false character to him whose name they had assumed.

LECTURE VI.

1 JOHN v. 6.

This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood.

IN my last Lecture I took occasion to consider all those heretics who are mentioned by name in the New Testament. All of them appear to have been connected with the Gnostics. I have likewise noticed the moral practice of those heretics, and their sentiments concerning God, the creation of the world, the inspiration of the prophets, and the resurrection. There were also two other persons, whose names, though not mentioned in the New Testament, are connected by many of the Fathers with the history of St. John; and who are stated to have lived some time before the close of the first century. I allude to Cerinthus and Ebion; whose doctrines I propose to examine in the present Lecture: and this will enable us to consider what hitherto I have only noticed incidentally, the place which was assigned to Jesus Christ in the Gnostic philosophy.

I have remarked more than once, that Christ was believed by the Gnostics to be one of the Eons, who was sent into the world to reveal the knowledge of the true God, and to free the souls of men from the power of the creative on or Demiurgus. This was the outline of the belief which was held by all the Gnostics concerning Christ; and as a necessary consequence of this belief, they all denied his in

carnation. It is the observation of Irenæus, that according to the opinion of none of the heretics was the Word of God made flesh: and I stated in my second Lecture, that there were two ways in which the Gnostics explained the appearance of Jesus upon earth, and obviated the difficulty of making an Æon sent from God to be united to Matter, which is inherently evil. They either denied that Christ had a real body at all, and held that he was an unsubstantial phantom; or granting that there was a man called Jesus, the son of human parents, they believed that the Eon Christ quitted the Pleroma and descended upon Jesus at his baptism b. The former of these two opinions seems to have been adopted earlier than the latter: and those who held it, from believing that Jesus existed only in appearance, were called Docete. The Docetæ again were divided into two parties: some said that the body of Jesus was altogether an illusion: and that he only appeared to perform the functions of life, like the Angels who were entertained by Abraham; or as Raphael is made to say to Tobit, All these days I did appear unto you: but I did neither eat nor drink, but ye did see a vision. (xii. 19.) The other Docetæ thought that Christ had a real and tangible body; but that it was formed of a celestial substance, which was resolved again into the same etherial elements, when Christ returned to the Pleroma. We need