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 far wrong, if we were to designate Essenism as Gnostic Judaism."

At Colossae the Gnostic tendency revealed itself in the insistence on minute prohibitions, limiting the liberty of the Christian at every turn in his use of things in themselves lawful, and the object of these disciplinary rules was "to check the indulgence of the flesh," but this object was not attained.

In the pastoral Epistles "forbidding to marry" is expressly included among the "seducing spirits and doctrines of devils" which will mark the apostates "in later times," and when we reflect on the long train of degrading consequences which have flowed from Christian asceticism, and notably