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 own that members of different sects are entitled, each in his degree, to claim kinship with Jesus and to obtain forgiveness of sins through Him. So again in one of the latest of the Gnostic systems, that of S, there is no assertion of an essential diversity of nature among men, but the immense development of ranks and degrees in the spiritual world, which that work professes to reveal, is used so as to provide for every man a place according to his works. In the system of Marcion, too, the theory of essentially different classes is abandoned; the great boast of Christianity is its universality; and the redemption of the Gospel is represented, not as the mere rousing of the pneumatic soul to consciousness of privileges all along possessed, but as the introduction of a real principle of moral life through the revelation of a God of love forgiving sins through Christ.

We add brief notes on a few main points of the Gnostic systems.

Creation and Cosmogony.—Philo (de Op. Mund.) had inferred from the expression, "Let us make man," of Genesis that God had used other beings as assistants in the creation of man, and he explains in this way why man is capable of vice as well as virtue, ascribing the origin of the latter to God, of the former to His helpers in the work of creation. The earliest Gnostic sects ascribe the work of creation to angels, some of them using the same passage in Genesis (Justin.Dial. cum Tryph. c. 67).

Doctrine with respect to Judaism.—The doctrine that the Creator of the world is not the supreme God leads at once to the question, What then is to be thought of the God of the Jews, who certainly claimed to have created the world? This question is most distinctly answered in the doctrine of the Ophite system (Iren. i. 30). According to it he who claimed to be a jealous God, acknowledging none other, was led by sheer ignorance to make a false pretension. He was in truth none other than the chief of the creative angels, holding but a subordinate place in the constitution of the universe. It was he who forbad to Adam and Eve that knowledge by which they might be informed that he had superiors, and who on their disobedience cast them out of Paradise.

Doctrine concerning the Nature of Man.—With the myth, told by Saturninus, of the animation of a previously lifeless man by a spark of light from above, he connected the doctrine, in which he was followed by almost all Gnostic sects, that there would be no resurrection of the body, the spark of light being taken back on death to the place whence it had come, and man's material part being resolved into its elements. Saturninus is said to have taught the doctrine, antagonistic to that of man's free will, that there were classes of men by nature essentially different, and of these he counted two—the good and the wicked. The doctrine became common to many Gnostic systems that the human frame contained a heavenly element struggling to return to its native place.

Redemption and Christology.—The Gnostic systems generally represent man's spirit as imprisoned in matter, and needing release. The majority recognize the coming of Christ as a turning-point in human affairs, but almost all reduce the Redeemer's work to the impartation of knowledge and the disclosure of mysteries. With regard to the nature of Christ, the lowest view is held by Justinus, who describes Jesus but as a shepherd boy commissioned by an angel to be the bearer of a divine revelation, and who attributes to Him at no time any higher character. Carpocrates makes Jesus a man like others, only of more than ordinary steadfastness and purity of soul, possessing no prerogatives which other men may not attain in the same or even higher degree if they follow, or surpass, His example. Besides furnishing an example, He was also supposed to have made a revelation of truth, to secret traditions of which the followers of Carpocrates appealed. At the opposite pole from those who see in the Saviour a mere man are those who deny His humanity altogether. We know from St. John's epistle that the doctrine that our Lord had not really come in the flesh was one which at an early time troubled the church.

Authorities.—The great work of Irenaeus against heresies is the chief storehouse whence writers, both ancient and modern, have drawn their accounts of the Gnostic sects. It was primarily directed against the then most popular form of the heresy of Valentinus, and hence this form of Gnosticism has thrown all others into the shade, and many modern writers when professing to describe Gnosticism really describe Valentinianism. Irenaeus was largely copied by Tertullian, who, however, was an independent authority on Marcionism; by Hippolytus, who in his work against heresies adds, however, large extracts from his independent reading of Gnostic works; and by Epiphanius, who also gives a few valuable additions from other sources. The Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria, though provokingly desultory and unsystematic, furnish much valuable information about Gnosticism, which was still a living foe of the church. The writings of Origen also yield much important information. The matter, not borrowed from Irenaeus, to be gleaned from later heresiologists is scanty and of doubtful value.

Modern works which have made valuable contributions to the knowledge of Gnosticism include Neander, Genetische Entwickelung (1818), and Church Hist. vol. ii. (1825 and 2nd ed. 1843, trans. in Clarke's series); Burton, Bampton Lectures (1829); Baur, Christliche Gnosis (1835); Die christliche Kirche der drei ersten Jahrhunderte (1853, 2nd ed. 1860); and Mansel, The Gnostic Heresies (1875).

[G.S.]

Gordianus (7), father of pope Gregory the Great, was a noble Roman of senatorial rank; and descended from a pope Felix (Joann. Diac. in Vit. S. Gregorii; Greg. Dialog. l. 4, c. 16). John the Deacon says that Felix IV. (acc. 523) was his ancestor; but this pope being described as a Samnite, whereas Gregory is always spoken of as of Roman descent, Felix III. (acc. 467) is more probable. A large property accrued to Gregory on his father's death. Gordianus is described as a religious man, and thus contributing to the eminently religious training of his son, though not canonized after death, as were his wife Silvia, and his two sisters, Tarsilla and