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    even the reason of the nineteenth century has as yet confessed itself inadequate . We should best designate the mental character of the GnQsticg by a word , which the French and the Germans have not scrupled to borrow from the Greek , Theosophuts , men whose contemplations were fixed immediately on God , the eternal source and principle of all things , instead of looking for wisdom nearer home by studying the order and harmony of his visible

    works . This a priori and fundamental knowledge of God was the gnosis which raised them so far above ordinary men , and from which they drew with so much certainty and confidence their magnificent theories of the order of Providence and the plan of the universe . It was distinct from faith , which they despised as unequal to the wants and capacities of a spiritual mind j nor was it reason , which , as an instrument of divine truth , their theories

    are a sufficient proof they never employed ; but it was actual knowledge , which they pretended to derive either , 1 . from some primitive revelation , to which they had access } or , 2 . from immediate intuition ; or 3 . from a more exact knowledge than was granted to the world , of the pure doctrines of Jesus Christ .

    As Christianity arose out of Judaism , the question naturall y occurs , whether the latter religion was at all impregnated with this Oriental spirit . That this was the fact , is not only probable from the influence to which it must have been exposed during its temporary exile on the banks of the Euphrates , but is certain , from the existence of the Cabbala , which we can first detect in

    the interval between the Babylonish captivity and the birth of Christ . The Cabbala was a body of etoterio doctrines relative to the spiritual world , which , us the name implies , had been derived from tradition , and which bore a close resemblance to the system of Zoroaster . The distinguishing feature of both systems is the doctrine of successive emanations from one primeval source of light , and the acknowledgment of a vast number of spiritual agents good and evil , in the administration of the affairs of the universe .

    Zoroaster , it is well known , taught the existence of two hostile powers , the causes respectively of good and evil , Ormustd and Ahriman ; and the traces of this belief , the recognition of aking ^ dom of darkness warring with that of Jehovah , which was an idea altogether at variance with the simple and absolute monotheism

    of the Mosaic institutions , first became perceptible after the return of the Jews from the land where their elders had had perpetual intercourse with the sages of Chaldea and Persia . Then first we discover , as a result of the diverse action of foreign influences on the same community , the hitherto unknown phenomenon of

    sectarian division among the Jewish people : the Pharisees eagerly embracing the splendid spiritualism of the East , the Essenes and Therap € Ut 38 exhibiting its mystic a ' od ascetic tendencies ; and the Sadduce « s , who rejected all tradition , and prided themselves on an adherence to the simple law of their fathers , presenting a

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    506 On th * In / lit ence cf ike

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1833, page 566, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2620/page/54/