which may equally well be taken from the Synoptics. The one apparent exception to this statement is neither conclusive in itself, nor strong enough to found any argument upon it.[65] In the later part of the Second Document, however, the words of St. John: “Where I am, there shall my servants be,” may possibly be thought to underlie the sentence in our text: “Wherefore I said unto you aforetime: Where I shall be, there will be with Me my Twelve servants,”[66] the word διάκονος being used in both cases; and in the Fourth Document there appear unmistakably the conversation of Jesus with the Samaritan woman,[67] and the spear thrust in His side at the Crucifixion,[68] neither of which incidents are recorded in the Synoptics. The conclusion, therefore, seems irresistible that while the author of the First Document did not know of St. John’s Gospel, the writer of part of the Second may have done so, and the writer of the Fourth was fully acquainted with it. Yet the literary critic, especially he who is acquainted with the literature of the early Christian centuries, will hardly require further proof of the relative dates of our four chief Documents than that afforded by a comparison of their contents. In the First, apart from a sketch of—to use a comprehensive word—the uranography of the sect, and the speculations about the Divine Nature before referred to, the author devotes nearly all his space to the episode of Pistis Sophia, which may fairly be looked upon as an allegory pointing out to man the penalty of transgressing the Divine Law, and the necessity of repentance. Thus, in one of the “Penitences” addressed to the highest Power that she knew, Pistis Sophia confesses that she has offended “the Law of the Light” and attributes her deliverance from Chaos to her consequent repentance.[69] There is more than one hint in the text that both the fall and the repentance take place within what is called “the world of humanity,” and we can without any overstraining of the allegory consider Pistis Sophia as representing the heathen world before the light of Christianity raised it from the degradation into which it had fallen by its material luxury, and restored it to something like what was supposed to be its primeval innocence.[70] Hence we have a fairly close parallel to stories like that of Christian in the _Pilgrim’s Progress_, who leaves the city of Mansoul to strive upward to the Heavenly City; and allowing for the difference of time and place, there is no reason why we should consider the Coptic version as the more ignoble allegory of the two. It should also be noticed that in this Document, the terrors of hell are hardly touched upon, and the “afflictions” of Sophia are spoken of throughout as confined to the loss of “light” and her consequent impotence to return without Divine aid to the Place which she had wilfully abandoned. Lastly magic and astrology are expressly if briefly condemned as unlawful knowledge brought to men by the sinning angels.