“But the victory of gnosticism would have been the ruin of Christianity. Christianity would have split into a hundred sects, its line of division from heathenism would have been erased, its inmost essence would have been lost, and instead of producing something really new, it would have become only an element of the melting mass, an additional ingredient in the fermenting chaos of religions which characterized the age.”[61] When the fountain of formative Christianity was thus widely and early corrupted, what wonder that the banks of the stream are covered with pagan _débris_, and that the waters are yet turbid from its sediment? FOOTNOTES: [25] _Cf._ Hibbert Lectures for 1888, by Edwin Hatch, D.D., Lecture i. [26] See _The Gnostics and Their Remains_, by C. W. King, M.A., p. 5, London, 1887. [27] See Harnack, _Dogmengeschichte_, vol. i., chap. 4. [28] _Church History_, vol. i., p. 566, N. Y., 1882. [29] _Dogmengeschichte_, vol. i., chap. 4. [30] Bauer, _Church Hist._, vol. i., p. 191, London, 1878. [31] Hom., _Il._, ii., 204. [32] _Ps. Justin._ (probably Apollonius, see Dräseke, in the _Jahrb. f. protestant. Theologie_, 1885, p. 144), chap. xvii. [33] Hom., _Il._, xviii., 483. [34] _Ps. Justin._, chap. xxviii. [35] Hom., _Il._, xiv., 206; also Clem. Alex., _Stroma._, v., 14. [36] _Il._, xxii., 8; Clem. Alex., _Stroma._, v., 14. [37] Hippol., _Philosophoumena_, vi., 14. [38] Herod., iv., 8-10. [39] Hippol., v., 21. [40] Hibbert Lectures for 1888, Lecture iii., pp. 69, 70, 72. [41] Irenæus, _Against Heresies_, book i., chap. viii. [42] Irenæus, _Against Heresies_, book i., chap. viii. [43] _Stroma._, book i., chap. iii. [44] _Strom._, bk. vi., ch. xi. [45] _Influence of Greek Thought_, etc., p. 77. [46] In quotations from the Fathers, words and clauses in brackets are thus printed as “supplied words” in the Ante-Nicene Library of T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh. [47] _Epistle_, ch. viii. [48] _Epistle_, ch. ix. [49] _Epistle_, chap. x. [50] This is a real or pretended quotation from some unknown Apochryphal book. [51] _Epistle_, chap. xii. [52] _Dialogue with Trypho_, chap. lxxxvi. [53] Isaiah liv., 9, may be referred to here, but there is nothing in Isaiah or elsewhere in the Bible like what Justin here asserts. [54] _Dialogue_, etc., chap. cxxxviii. [55] _Ante-Nicene Library_, T. & T. Clark, vol. vi., p. 500. [56] _Epistle of Clement_, chap. xxv. [57] _Stromata_, bk. vi., ch. xvi. [58] _Against Marcion_, book iii., chapter xviii. [59] Letter lv., chapter xvii., par. 31. [60] _The Old Catholic Church_, by W. D. Killen, D.D., pp. 99, 100, Edinburgh, 1871. [61] _Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism_, pp. 346, 347. CHAPTER III. ASIATIC PAGAN WATER-WORSHIP.