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108 this or that "stage." It is hardly likely that Clement would have censured unreservedly what appears here as the leading principle of Basilides, the Divine resignment of a limited sphere of action to each order of being, and the Divine bestowal of proportionally limited powers of apprehending God upon the several orders, though it is true that Clement himself specially cherished the thought of an upward progress from one height of being to another, as part of the Divine salvation (Strom. vii. p. 835, etc.). Doubtless Basilides pushed election so far as to sever a portion of mankind from the rest, as alone entitled by Divine decree to receive the higher enlightenment. In this sense it must have been that he called "the election a stranger to the world, as being by nature supermundane"; while Clement maintained that no man can by nature be a stranger to the world (iv. p. 639). It is hardly necessary to point out how closely the limitation of spheres agrees with the doctrine on which the Great Ignorance is founded, and the supermundane election with that of the Third Sonship.

The same rigid adhesion to the conception of natural fixity, and inability to accept Christian beliefs, which transcend it, led Basilides (ὁ Β.) to confine the remission of sins to those which are committed involuntarily and in ignorance; as though, says Clement (Strom. iv. p. 634), it were a man and not God that bestowed the gift. A like fatalistic view of Providence is implied in the language held by Basilides (in the 23rd book of his Exegetica, as quoted by Clement, Strom. iv. pp. 599‒603) in reference to the sufferings of Christian martyrs. In this instance we have the benefit of verbal extracts, though unfortunately their sense is in parts obscure. So far as they go, they do not bear out the allegations of Agrippa Castor (ap. Eus. H. E. iv. 7, § 7) that Basilides taught that the partaking of food offered to idols, and the heedless (ἀπαραφυλάκτως) abjuration of the faith in time of persecution was a thing indifferent; and of Origen (Com. in Matt. iii. 856 Ru.), that he depreciated the martyrs, and treated lightly the sacrificing to heathen deities. The impression seems to have arisen partly from a misunderstanding of the purpose of his argument, partly from the actual doctrine and practices of later Basilidians; but it may also have had some justification in incidental words which have not been preserved. Basilides is evidently contesting the assumption, probably urged in controversy against his conception of the justice of Providence, that the sufferers in "what are called tribulations" (ἐν ταῖς λεγομέναις θλίψεσιν) are to be regarded as innocent, simply because they suffer for their Christianity. He suggests that some are in fact undergoing punishment for previous unknown sins, while "by the goodness of Him Who brings events to pass" (τοῦ περιάγοντος) they are allowed the comfort of suffering as Christians, "not subject to the rebuke as the adulterer or the murderer" (apparently with reference to I Pet. iii. 17, iv. 15, 16, 19); and if there be any who suffers without previous sin, it will not be "by the design of an [adverse] power" (κατ᾿ ἐπιβουλὴν δυνάμεως), but as suffers the babe who appears to have committed no sin. The next

attempts at some length an exposition of this comparison with the babe. The obvious distinction is drawn between sin committed in act (ἐνεργῶς) and the capacity for sin (τὸ ἁμαρτητικόν); the infant is said to receive a benefit when it is subjected to suffering, "gaining" many hardships (πολλὰ κέρδαινον δύσκολα). So it is, he says, with the suffering of a perfect man, for his not having sinned must not be set down to himself; though he has done no evil, he must have willed evil; "for I will say anything rather than call Providence (τὸ προνοῦν) evil." He did not shrink, Clement says, and the language seems too conclusive, from applying his principle even to the Lord. "If, leaving all these arguments, you go on to press me with certain persons, saying, for instance, 'Such an one sinned therefore, for such an one suffered,' if you will allow me I will say, 'He did not sin, but he is like the suffering babe'; but if you force the argument with greater violence, I will say that any man whom you may choose to name is a man, and that God is righteous; for 'no one,' as it has been said, 'is clear of defilement'&#8202;" (ῥύπου). He likewise brought in the notion of sin in a past stage of existence suffering its penalty here, "the elect soul" suffering "honourably (ἐπιτίμως) through martyrdom, and the soul of another kind being cleansed by an appropriate punishment." To this doctrine of metempsychosis (τὰς ἐνσωματώσεις) "the Basilidians" (οἱ ἀπὸ Β.) are likewise said to have referred the language of the Lord about requital to the third and fourth generations (Exc. Theod. 976); Origen states that Basilides himself interpreted Rom. vii. 9 in this sense, "The Apostle said, 'I lived without a law once,' that is, before I came into this body, I lived in such a form of body as was not under a law, that of a beast namely, or a bird" (Com. in Rom. iv. 549, Ru.); and elsewhere (Com. in Matt. l.c.) Origen complains that he deprived men of a salutary fear by teaching that transmigrations are the only punishments after death. What more Basilides taught about Providence as exemplified in martyrdoms is not easily brought together from Clement's rather confused account. He said that one part of what is called the will of God (i.e. evidently His own mind towards lower beings, not what He would have their mind to be) is to love (or rather perhaps be satisfied with, ἠγαπηκέναι) all things because all things preserve a relation to the universe (λόγου ἀποσώζουσι πρὸς τὸ πᾶν ἅπαντα), and another to despise nothing, and a third to hate no single thing (601). In the same spirit pain and fear were described as natural accidents of things (ἐπισυμβαίνει τοῖς πράγμασιν), as rust of iron (603). In another sentence (602) Providence seems to be spoken of as set in motion by the Archon; by which perhaps was meant (see Hipp. c. 24, cited above, p. 272 ) that the Archon was the unconscious agent who carried into execution (within his own "stage") the long dormant original counsels of the not-being God. The view of the harmony of the universe just referred to finds expression, with a reminiscence of a famous sentence of Plato (Tim. 31 ), in a saying (Strom. v. p. 690) that Moses "set up one 