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Untitled Article
raising themselves to a state of intellectual and spiritual superiority above the vulgar . This pre-eminencQ they founded on their possession Qf the gnosisj which they derived by immediate intuition from God , and which they regarded as a sort of key to the secret
treasures of the divine mysteries . Guided by this interior sense , they decided most daringly between the true and the false in the recorded teachings of Christ and his apostles : retained or rejected at pleasure any of ( he books of the sacred canon , and sometimes substituted others in their place . They were the philosophizing Christians of that early age , looking for confirmation of their own
theories in the language of Scripture , and , when Scripture was refractory 3 binding it to the requirements of their own gnosis . They were men who admitted the facts of the life and teaching of Jesus , and who have been properly quoted by Lardner as unexceptionable witnesses for their truth ; but who had not yet learned to pay implicit deference to the canonical transmission of those facts ,
and were quite disposed to place their own private tradition upon a footing of equal authority with the written word , They made the distinction , which has been adopted in later times , but which there is considerable difficulty in appiying % between what Christ said under the immediate influence of inspiration , and what he said from accommodation to the prejudices of his hearers . But by far the most objectionable part of their system was the further
distinction which they attempted to introduce into Christianity , of a doctrine for the vulgar and a doctrine for the enlightened ; a distinction which , if it had once obtained footing , would have struck at the root of Christian freedom and equality , and by establishing Christian mysteries and initiations , end a caste of tiluminati , would have brought back the worst institutions of heathen priestcraft .
The radical idea , prevailing most of these Gnostic systems , is that of a revelation through Christ of the supreme and unknown God . They did not rest in this revelation , or limit it to its moral applications * but saw in it a light that was to unfold to them the moral machinery of the universe . They hod attained , as they conceived , to the primeval source of truth , and could follow down from it , through its successive emanations , the widely-extended
economy of the spiritual world . Their speculation was carried on in the extremest spirit of opposition to the modern and only pound philosophy , that of ascending from facts through successive inductions to general principles : they , on the contrary , assumed the principle and asserted the facts ; and the results were unsatisfactory and portentous in proportion to the magnitude end difficulty Df the subjects on which their favourite speculations turned .
It was an idea of the Gnostics , that the emanations from the Supreme Being were effected by a voluntary limitation of the fulness of his own perfections ; and the whole series of emanations thus produced , they called pleroma , tl * e circle of ipiritual beati-
Untitled Article
670 On the Itijfuence of ike
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1833, page 570, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2620/page/58/
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