erate the world from the false teaching of Moses. Those who held this view combined it, as a
rule, with a Platonic philosophy; Plotinus, as we saw, found some difficulty in refuting it.
Gnosticism afforded a half-way house between philosophic paganism and Christianity, for,
while it honoured Christ, it thought ill of the Jews. The same was true, later, of Manichæsm,
through which Saint Augustine came to the Catholic Faith. Manichaæsm combined Christian
and Zoroastrian elements, teaching that evil is a positive principle, embodied in matter, while
the good principle is embodied in spirit. It condemned meateating, and all sex, even in
marriage. Such intermediate doctrines helped much in the gradual conversion of cultivated men
of Greek speech; but the New Testament warns true believers against them: "O Timothy, keep
that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of
science [Gnosis] falsely so called: which some professing have erred concerning the faith." *
Gnostics and Manichæans continued to flourish until the government became Christian. After
that time they were led to conceal their beliefs, but they still had a subterranean influence. One
of the doctrines of a certain sect of Gnostics was adopted by Mahomet. They taught that Jesus
was a mere man, and that the Son of God descended upon him at the baptism, and abandoned
him at the time of the Passion. In support of this view they appealed to the text: "My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me?" †--a text which, it must be confessed, Christians have
always found difficult. The Gnostics considered it unworthy of the Son of God to be born, to be
an infant, and, above all, to die on the cross; they said that these things had befallen the man
Jesus, but not the divine Son of God. Mahomet, who recognized Jesus as a prophet, though not
as divine, had a strong class feeling that prophets ought not to come to a bad end. He therefore
adopted the view of the Docetics (a Gnostic sect), according to which it was a mere phantom
that hung upon the cross, upon which, impotently and ignorantly, Jews and Romans wreaked
their ineffectual vengeance. In this way, something of Gnosticism passed over into the orthodox
doctrine of Islam.
The attitude of Christians to contemporary Jews early became hostile. The received view was
that God had spoken to the patriarchs
* I Timothy VI, 20, 21.â
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Mark XXV, 34.