It was into this atmosphere that Gnosticism entered at least as early as the reign of Hadrian. Who was answerable for its first introduction there we have no means of knowing, nor do we even know with any certainty what form Egyptian Gnosticism first took[302]. One would imagine that the Hellenizing tendency of the Samaritans might have brought to Alexandria the doctrines of Simon Magus, but there is no direct evidence to that effect. The case is different with Antioch, where one Saturninus or Satornilus—the name is spelt differently by Irenaeus and Hippolytus—seems to have put forth, at the period referred to, a _quasi_-Christian system having some likeness to that of the Ophites, its chief distinguishing feature being its hatred of Judaism and its God, for whose overthrow it declared Christ to have been sent[303]. Like the Ophites, Saturninus rigidly opposed the commerce of the sexes, declaring marriage and generation to be alike the work of Satan, the declared enemy of the world-creating angels, and of their leader the God of the Jews[304]. But the followers of this Saturninus seem to have been few in number, and although all the later heresiologists preserved the memory of his teaching, it is probable that the sect itself did not long survive its founder[305]. Basilides, whose name is associated with that of Saturninus by Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Epiphanius, who all make him a fellow disciple with Saturninus of Menander, the continuator or successor of Simon Magus[306], certainly flourished under the same reign at Alexandria, where he taught an extremely complicated doctrine, declaring that between the unknown Father of All and this world there was interposed a series of 365 heavens corresponding in number to the days of the year, the chief of them being called Abraxas, the letters of which word have that numerical value[307]. This is the account of Irenaeus, not materially varied by any of the other early writers on heresy, with the exception of Hippolytus, who gives us a long account of the doctrine of Basilides and his son Isidore, which according to their own account they derived from Matthias, the Apostle who replaced Judas and who received it secretly from Jesus Himself[308]. From Hippolytus, we learn that Basilides’ complete or final teaching declared that there was a time when nothing existed— “neither matter, nor substance, nor the Unsubstantial, nor simple, nor compound, nor the Intelligible, nor the Unintelligible, nor that which can be comprehended by the senses, nor that which cannot be so comprehended, nor man, nor angel, nor god, nor anything which can be named”—