tradition with which they held themselves to be favoured. Lastly, the idea of Sacraments, as conveying grace under a covering of sense, would be superfluous to the gnostic, inasmuch as the spiritual elements in man belong to him by nature, and are not communicated by a Redeemer, and would be repulsive to him because matter is a product of the evil principle, and cannot be the channel of grace from out the Light-realm.(218) My purpose here has only been to say just so much of Gnosticism as may show how the whole Christian truth was attacked by it, and especially the existence and functions of the Church. And this may indeed be termed the first heresy in that it struck its roots right up into Apostolic times. Irenæus, Eusebius, and Epiphanius account Simon Magus to be its father, and the father of all heresy. As such it is not without significance that he encountered the first of the Apostles in Samaria, endeavouring to purchase from him the gifts of grace and miraculous power, and that he likewise afterwards encountered him at Rome. To this the first manifestation of Gnosticism succeed heretical doctrines concerning the Person of our Lord, which sprung out of Judaism; but no sooner are these overcome than Gnosticism in its later forms spreads from Syria and Alexandria over the whole empire, everywhere confronting the Church, seducing her members, and tempting especially speculative minds within her. A mixture itself of Platonic, Philonic, Pythagorean, and Parsic philosophy, affecting to gather the best out of all philosophies and religions, in which it exactly represented the eclectic spirit of its age, arraying itself in the most fantastic garb of imagination, but at the bottom no dubious product of the old heathen pantheism, it set itself to the work, while it assumed Christian names, of confusing and distracting Christian truth. From the beginning of the second century it was the great enemy which beset the Church. It may, then, well represent to us the principle of heresy itself, and as such let us consider on what principles it was met by the Church’s teachers.