free themselves from the recognition of any Apostolic authority. Paul successfully opposes these divisions in his Epistle to the Corinthians. Apprehension of a threatened growth of gnostic teachers is first expressed in the Apostle Paul’s farewell addresses to the elders of Asia Minor (Acts xx. 29); and in the Epistle to the Colossians, as well as in the Pastoral Epistles, this ψευδώνυμος γνῶσις is expressly opposed as manifesting itself in the adoption of oriental theosophy, magic, and theurgy, in an arbitrary asceticism that forbade marriage and restricted the use of food, in an imaginary secret knowledge of the nature and order of the heavenly powers and spirits, and idealistic volatilizing of concrete Christian doctrines, such as that of the resurrection (2 Tim. ii. 18). In the First Epistle of John, again, that special form of Gnosis is pointed out which denied the incarnation of God in Christ by means of docetic conceptions; and in the Second Epistle of Peter, as well as in the Epistle of Jude, we have attention called to antinomian excrescences, unbridled immorality and wanton lust in the development of magical and theurgical views. It should not, however, be left unmentioned, that modern criticism has on many grounds contested the authenticity of the New Testament writings just named, and has assigned the first appearance of heretical gnosis to the beginning of the second century. The Nicolaitans of the Apocalypse (iii. 5, 14, 15, 20) appear to have been an antinomian sect of Gentile Christian origin, spread more or less through the churches of Asia Minor, perhaps without any gnostic background, which in direct and intentional opposition to the decision of the Apostolic Council (Acts xv. 29) took part in heathen sacrificial feasts (comp. 1 Cor. x.), and justified or at least apologized for fleshly impurity. FIRST DIVISION. History of the Development of the Church during the Græco-Roman and Græco-Byzantine Periods. § 19. CONTENT, DISTRIBUTION AND BOUNDARIES OF THOSE PERIODS.