Lightfoot, Com. on Colossians, 76-113, esp. 82, has traced a connection between the Gnostic doctrine, the earlier Colossian heresy, and the still earlier teaching of the Essenes of Palestine. All these were characterized by (1) the spirit of caste or intellectual exclusiveness; (2) peculiar tenets as to creation and as to evil; (3) practical asceticism. Matter is evil and separates man from God; hence intermediate beings between man and God as objects of worship; hence also mortification of the body as a means of purifying man from sin. Paul’s antidote for both errors was simply the person of Christ, the true and only Mediator and Sanctifier. See Guericke, Church History, 1:161. Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 1:128—“The majority of Gnostic undertakings may be viewed as attempts to transform Christianity into a theosophy.... In Gnosticism the Hellenic spirit desired to make itself master of Christianity, or more correctly, of the Christian communities.”... 232—Harnack represents one of the fundamental philosophic doctrines of Gnosticism to be that of the Cosmos as a mixture of matter with divine sparks, which has arisen from a descent of the latter into the former [Alexandrian Gnosticism], or, as some say, from the perverse, or at least merely permitted undertaking of a subordinate spirit [Syrian Gnosticism]. We may compare the Hebrew Sadducee with the Greek Epicurean; the Pharisee with the Stoic; the Essene with the Pythagorean. The Pharisees overdid the idea of God’s transcendence. Angels must come in between God and the world. Gnostic intermediaries were the logical outcome. External works of obedience were alone valid. Christ preached, instead of this, a religion of the heart. Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 1:52—“The rejection of animal sacrifices and consequent abstaining from temple-worship on the part of the Essenes, which seems out of harmony with the rest of their legal obedience, is most simply explained as the consequence of their idea that to bring to God a bloody animal offering was derogatory to his transcendental character. Therefore they interpreted the O. T. command in an allegorizing way.” Lyman Abbott: “The Oriental dreams; the Greek defines; the Hebrew acts. All these influences met and intermingled at Alexandria. Emanations were mediations between the absolute, unknowable, all-containing God, and the personal, revealed and holy God of Scripture. Asceticism was one result: matter is undivine, therefore get rid of it. License was another result: matter is undivine, therefore disregard it—there is no disease and there is no sin—the modern doctrine of Christian Science.” Kedney, Christian Doctrine, 1:360-373; 2:354, conceives of the divine glory as an eternal material environment of God, out of which the universe is fashioned.