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    the Docetse ; and that of those who considered heaven and earth as equally under the superintendence of one divine principle , and regarded our Saviour as , in nature , a mere man—the Ebionites : these were viewed as the extreme points of heretical opinion ; one denying

    the divinity , the other the humanity of Christ ; and between them , recognising the union of the two natures , the precise centre of orthodoxy was supposed ( o lie . It will be seen , however , that the Gnostic principle , in its various forms , connected by imperceptible gradations even these extreme points of divergency ; that there was an Ebionitish form of Gnosticism as well as one which

    harmonized with the system of the Docetae ; and that the doctrine of Cerinthus , in particular , who was contemporary with St . John , marks the transition from the Judaizing sects of Christians to proper Gnosticism . When the course of speculation is so purely imaginative and arbitrary , so little governed by any principle of reason ^ as in the

    case of the Gnostics , it becomes almost impossible to classify the several schools and doctrines with any approach to exactness . As these speculations , however , had their source in philosphical doctrines , which existed previous to Christianity , we may , for the sake of distinctness , distribute them into two prominent classes , according to the regions in which the doctrines , from which

    they appear to have sprung , chiefly prevailed , and trace them either to an Alexandrine or a Syrian gnosis . Of these two schools of Gnosticism , it is observed by Neander , ( i . p . 424 , ) that Platonism , with its peculiar views of the nature of matter , is the basis of the former ; and Parsism , with its doctrine of the two principles of light and darkness , of the latter . In the former of these schools ,

    Satan is the being opposed to the supreme and benevolent God , and matter is his domain , while the demiurgus , or immediate maker of the world , so far from being opposed to the supreme God , is his agent and organ . In accordance with these principles , no contrariety was supposed to exist between the old dispensation and the new ; between the material and the spiritual world : the

    former were regarded as states of progress and transition to the higher order of things announced or existing in the latter ; the visible husk or shell of a gnosis , that was revealed to the spiritual mind . There were thus two different worlds , and two different dispensations corresponding to them ; at the head of each dispensation , as at the head of each world , there was a different God , a higher and a lower ; and this distinction was extended even to

    Christ , the earthly Christ and the heavenly Christ being united at the baptism . Though the notion entertained of matter by this school was such as might lead to ascetic practices ; yet their acknowledgment of a harmony between the visible and invisible world deterred them from the extravagances of those who considered matter as altogether within the jurisdiction of a malignant being . In the Syrian gnosis , on the other hand , into which the

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    56 S On the Influence of the

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1833, page 568, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2620/page/56/