Page:The Apocryphal Acts of Paul, Peter, John, Andrew and Thomas.djvu/15

 trace these Acts back to the fourth century by means of references in writers of that date. At that time they were chiefly in use among the Manichaeans; yet there are grounds for looking on them as more ancient than that heresy, which only began toward the end of the third century. We do not find, indeed, the name of Leucius in any writer earlier than the fourth century; yet earlier writers show acquaintance with stories which we know to have been in the Leucian Acts; whence the conclusion has been drawn that these Acts are really a second-century production, and that they found favor with the Manichseans on account of the affinity of their doctrines. From Epiphanius we know that these Acts were also largely in use among other heretical parties, and much that still remains to us seems frequently to favor older sectarian opinions, although in our present texts the most characteristic passages have been toned down or removed. Scarcely one of these Gnostic Acts of the Apostles has come down to us wholly untampered with; while, on the other hand, even in works which have already passed several times through the reforming hands of Catholic revisers, some of the old Gnostic features, despite all their efforts, are still distinctly traceable.

The original purpose with which these apocryphal writings were composed was that of diffusing a knowledge of the doctrines and customs of the various Gnostic schools, and of setting up against the Catholic tradition another which appealed with no less confidence to the authority of apostles and their immediate disciples. And yet it was hardly as a sort of rival or additional canon that these writings were presented to the Christian public of those times. They aimed, rather, at supplying a popular kind of religious reading in the shape of tracts set forth by the Gnostic propaganda, which, professing to contain historical reminiscences from