Their errors soon began to be widely propagated by Judaizing teachers of Christianity, and by Gentile heretics; and with respect to the teachings of the Old Testament concerning the Creator, the Messiah, mediation, the Unity, Trinity, and other subjects, became at an early period extensively prevalent. The Gnosticism which, under Cerinthus and others, assailed the Jewish converts in the apostles' days, and was propagated during that and several succeeding ages, under many leaders, and with various modifications, was a compound of Oriental philosophy and Judaizing infidelity. To that, in its original form, succeeded, in the second century, the modifications of the Asiatic and Egyptian sects, and the heresies of the Monarchins, or Patripassians; the sects of Theodotus, Artemon, Hermogenes and others; in the third, the Manichæans, the Sabellians, and the followers of Paul of Samosata; and in the fourth, the Arians, Semiarians, Pelagians, and others, which, with an occasional change of name, have come down to the present day, and constitute, in relation to the leading doctrines and object of the Holy Scriptures, one comprehensive heresy, of which the cardinal feature is a denial or derogation of what belongs to the official Person, character, and works of the Mediator. In the controversies to which those heresies gave occasion, owing to the nature of the questions which were discussed, the character and objects of the parties brought into conflict, the want of familiarity with the theology of the Hebrew Scriptures on the part of the orthodox, Gentile controvertists; owing to these and the like causes, the ascription, common in the patriarchal, Mosaic, and prophetic history, and in the first period of Christianity, of all the works of creation and providence to the official mediatorial Person, was gradually discontinued, and at length wholly dropped, even by those who believed in his divinity. CHAPTER XXIII. Continuation of the subject of the foregoing Chapter--Reference to the Heresies, respecting the Creator, of the three first and ensuing centuries. The heresy of the Gnostic philosophers, like that of the geologists of the present day, had to do with the question of a creator and creation as its starting theme. "They boasted," says Mosheim, "of being able to restore mankind to the knowledge of the true and supreme Being, [_i. e._, the Deity, as superior to the evil being, regarded by them as creator,] which had been lost in the world, and foretold the approaching defeat of the _evil principle_, _i. e._, the Devil, to whom they attributed _the creation_ of this globe." Their Unitarianism, like that of later times, could tolerate the notion of _divine creatures_, a _created creator_; but they could not allow that such a world as this was or could have been created by the true Supreme Being.