[Footnote 1: Of the Basilides with whose doctrines this book opens, little is known. While some would on slender grounds make him a Syrian, there is no doubt that he taught in Egypt and especially in Alexandria, where he seems to have steeped himself in Greek philosophy. This must have been during the reign of Hadrian and some time before the appearance of the far greater heresiarch Valentinus. If we could believe the testimony of Epiphanius, Basilides was a fellow-disciple with Satornilus, to be presently mentioned, of Menander, the immediate successor of Simon Magus; and, according to the more trustworthy witness of Clement of Alexandria (_Strom._, VII, 17), he himself claimed to be the disciple of Glaucias, “the interpreter” of St. Peter. He had a son Isidore who shared his teaching, and he wrote a treatise in twenty-four books on the Gospels which he called _Exegetica_. The sect that he founded, although never popular, lingered for some time in Egypt; but there is much probability in Matter’s conjecture (_Hist. crit. du Gnost._, 2nd ed., III, 36), that most of his followers became the hearers of Valentinus. Our author’s account of Basilides’ doctrine at first sight differs so widely from that given by Irenæus and his copyists that it was for long supposed that the two accounts were irreconcilable. The late Prof. Hort, however, in his lucid article on the subject in the _Dictionary of Christian Biography_ showed with much skill that this was not so, and that the Basilidian doctrine contained in our text is in all probability that of the _Exegetica_ itself, while the teaching attributed to Basilides by Irenæus and others was the same doctrine largely corrupted by the inconsistent and incoherent superstitions which invariably attach themselves to any faith propagated in secret. The immediate source of Basilides’ own teaching cannot, up to the present time, be satisfactorily traced; but, although its coping-stone, the non-existent Deity, shows some likeness to the Buddhistic ideas which were at any rate known in the Alexandria of his time (Clem. Alex., _Strom._, I, 15), it is probable that among the relics of the ancient Egyptian religion, then almost extinct, something of the same idea might have been found. His obligation to the Stoic philosophy is well brought out by Hort; and he was doubtless versed in the dialectical methods of Aristotle, which, then as later, formed the universal equipment of the student of philosophy. Hippolytus’ theory that the ground-work of the Basilidian edifice is a conscious or unconscious borrowing from Aristotle derives no support from any Aristotelian writings known to us. Unlike other Gnostics, Basilides displays no animus towards the Jews beyond reducing their Deity to the Ruler of the Hebdomad, or lowest spiritual world, and he accepts as fully as possible the Divinity of Jesus and the authority of the New Testament. Of the Docetism attributed to him by Irenæus and