Christian theology, getting the doctrine of the archangels and angels directly from the Oriental _Kabala_, of which the Mosaic _Bible_ is but an allegorical screen, ought at least to remember the hierarchy invented by the former for these personified emanations. The hosts of the Cherubim and Seraphim, with which we generally see the Catholic Madonnas surrounded in their pictures, belong, together with the Elohim and Beni Elohim of the Hebrews, to the _third_ kabalistic world, _Jezirah_. This world is but one remove higher than _Asiah_, the fourth and lowest world, in which dwell the grossest and most material beings--the _klippoth_, who delight in evil and mischief, and whose chief is _Belial_! Explaining, in his way, of course, the various “heresies” of the first two centuries, Irenæus says: “Our Hæretics hold ... that PROPATOR is known but to the _only-begotten_ son, that is to the _mind_” (the nous). It was the Valentinians, the followers of the “profoundest doctor of the Gnosis,” Valentinus, who held that “there was a perfect AIÔN, who existed before Bythos, or Buthon (the Depth), called Propator.” This is again kabalistic, for in the _Sohar_ of Simon Ben Iochaï, we read the following: “_Senior occultatus est et absconditus; Microprosopus manifestus est, et non manifestus_” (Rosenroth: _The Sohar Liber Mysteries_, iv., 1). In the religious metaphysics of the Hebrews, the Highest One is an abstraction; he is “without form or being,” “with no likeness with anything else.”[391] And even Philo calls the Creator, the _Logos_ who stands next God, “the SECOND God.” “The _second_ God who is his WISDOM.”[392] God is NOTHING, he is nameless, and therefore called _Ain-Soph_--the word _Ain_ meaning _nothing_.[393] But if, according to the older Jews, Jehovah is _the_ God, and He manifested Himself several times to Moses and the prophets, and the Christian Church anathematized the Gnostics who denied the fact--how comes it, then, that we read in the fourth gospel that “_No man hath seen God_ AT ANY TIME, but the _only-begotten_ Son ... he hath declared him?” The very words of the Gnostics, in spirit and substance. This sentence of St. John--or rather whoever wrote the gospel now bearing his name--floors all the Petrine arguments against Simon Magus, without appeal. The words are repeated and emphasized in chapter vi.: “_Not that any man hath seen the Father_, save he which is of God, he (Jesus) hath seen the Father” (46)--the very objection brought forward by Simon in the _Homilies_. These words prove that either the author of the fourth evangel had no idea of the existence of the _Homilies_, or that he was _not_ John, the friend and companion of Peter, whom he contradicts point-blank with this emphatic assertion. Be it as it may, this sentence, like many more that might be profitably cited, blends Christianity completely with the Oriental Gnosis, and hence with the KABALA.