Before we approach the principal subject treated of in this section, it will be proper to say something of a sect or society which in its day took a leading part in the affairs of the world, but which has long since disappeared from history, and whose former existence is now only known to the careful reader. We refer to the Gnostics, who for the most part flourished in the second century. They were divided among themselves into more than fifty different sects. "The principal among them were known under the names of Basilidians, Valentinians, and Marcionites. They abounded in Egypt, Asia, Rome, and were found in considerable numbers in the provinces of the West. Each of these sects could boast of its Bishops and congregations, of its doctors and martyrs, and instead of the four Gospels adopted by the church, they produced a multitude of histories, in which the actions and discourses of Christ and his apostles were _adapted_ to their respective tenets."-- (Decline and Fall, chap. xv. vol. I. p. 257.) They supported their opinions by various fictitious and apocryphal writings of Adam, Abraham, Zoroaster, Christ, and the Apostles. They were for the most part composed of Gentiles who denied the divine authority of the Old Testament, and rejected the Mosaic account of the creation, of the origin and fall of man, and claimed that a God was unworthy of adoration, who for a trivial offence of Adam and Eve pronounced sentence of condemnation on all their descendants. They adored Christ as an _Æon_, or divine emanation, who appeared on the earth to reclaim man from the paths of error and point out to him the ways of truth; but with these opinions they mingled many sublime and obscure tenets derived from oriental philosophy. This divine _Æon_ or emanation they considered was the Son of God, but was inferior to the Father, and they rejected his humanity on the principle that everything corporeal is essentially and intrinsically evil. They agreed with the Christians in their abhorrence of polytheism and idolatry, and both regarded the former as a composition of human fraud and error, and demons as the authors and patrons of the latter. As we have stated, the Gnostics for the most part sprang up in the second century and disappeared in the fourth and fifth, suppressed by a law of the Emperor Constantine. "The Emperor enacted a law by which they were forbidden to assemble in their own houses of prayer, in private houses, or in, public places, but were compelled to enter the Catholic church.... Hence the greater number of these sectarians were led by fear of consequences to join themselves to the church. Those who adhered to their original sentiments did not at their death leave any disciples to propagate their heresies, for, owing to the restrictions to which they were subjected, they were prevented from preaching their doctrines."-- (Sozomen, Ecc. Hist., book ii ch. 32.)