The case is different when we come to our Third Document to which the Fragment has somehow been prefixed. While the first two Documents are, as has been said, probably by Valentinus, it is perfectly certain that this cannot be the case with the Third. Valentinus was, as his opponents admitted, a man of genius who for a time must have held a leading position in the Christian world, and had he been made Pope, might possibly have introduced a syncretistic religion like that of Manes two centuries later, and have attempted to fit into the Gospel narrative elements borrowed from the Egyptian, the Persian, and the Buddhist religions. But of these, the Egyptian, which Valentinus was naturally most anxious to amalgamate with Christianity, had long since sunk into what has been called “a systematised sorcery,” and the result of his attempt to pour new wine into old bottles was not long in showing itself. Between the times of Valentinus and of Irenæus a Jewish magician named Marcus produced a system which anticipates many of the childish processes of the Mediæval Cabala, and attempted to turn Valentinus’ account of the Pleroma into a senseless juggling with the numerical value of the Greek letters.[105] Such foolishness seems to have been popular in Egypt, Catholic writers themselves not being entirely free from it,[106] and to this Marcus added according to Irenæus, sacraments with invocations in some Hebrew jargon assisted by tricks which caused the consecrated wine to change colour and to overflow the cup. Our Third Document, though not going so far in this respect as the Fourth, tends manifestly in this direction, and although it resembles the story of Pistis Sophia in being in the form of a dialogue between Jesus and His disciples, it has very little in common with it. The constitution of the Universe, which it rather assumes than describes, is indeed the same, and the First Mystery and the Ineffable One are still mentioned with reverence as being “merciful and compassionate and forgiving sins alway.” Save for this, however, there is nothing to connect it with Valentinus’ more sublime ideas, and the whole purport of the questions asked by the disciples and the answers of the Saviour is how the “mysteries” which Jesus has brought with Him are to be used to enable their recipients to avoid the consequences of their sins and thus to go after death to “inherit the Kingdom of Light.” All this is reminiscent throughout of the _Book of the Dead_ and the other Egyptian funerary texts, and the likeness is increased when, as before said, we read in it of “mysteries” which, when spoken into the ears of the dying or repeated over the dead, or even the knowledge gained during life of the names of certain Powers set over punishments, will afford the dwellers in Amente and the other hells deliverance from their tortures and will finally admit them into the Kingdom. These have already been sufficiently dealt