e._, by then raising him from the dead,] will reign with his people in the land of Palestine during a thousand years." Cent. I. part 2, chap. 5, sec. 16. There can be no mistake as to the source of what is correct in this creed, nor as to the state of mind in which its stupendous errors were conceived and propagated. Marcion, Basilides, and others among the Gnostic leaders of the _Asiatic_ and _Egyptian_ sects in the second century, held, in respect to a creator and creation, sentiments very similar to those of Cerinthus. The Valentinians, a very numerous sect, were taught by Valentine their chief, as is recorded in Mosheim, "_That the Creator of this world_," whom, in common with most of the heretics of that period, he took to be a creature, "_came by degrees to imagine himself to be God alone_, or, at least, to desire that mankind should consider him as such." He therefore "sent forth prophets to the Jewish nation, to declare his claim to the honor that is due to the Supreme Being." The Patripassians asserted the unity of God in such a manner as to exclude all distinction of Persons; and in this respect they were imitated by the Sabellians of the ensuing century. The leading features of nearly all the heresies of the first three centuries, especially those which were widely diffused and long perpetuated, whether invented by minds imbued by the Oriental philosophy or with hereditary Jewish opinions and prejudices related to the Creator and the works of creation. The best of them were in that particular, for substance, like the heresy of Arius in the fourth century, who taught "that the Son was the _first_ and _noblest_ of these beings, whom God the _Father_ had created out of nothing, and was the instrument by whose subordinate operation the universe was made." The Council of Nice, convened in 325 to suppress this heresy, appears scarcely to have checked its progress; and during the protracted discussions and contests which ensued, and which agitated both the eastern and western divisions of the Church, there is probably no single instance of a simple scriptural statement respecting the Trinity, and the Person and work of the Mediator, except in the case of such as dissented and seceded from the Established Church, and were persecuted by all parties in that Church. The attention of those whom the Councils called orthodox, in distinction from heretics, was absorbed by attempts to explain the inexplicable questions in controversy. They sought in this way to answer and confound their opponents. The heretics nowhere in these controversies bring into view anything scriptural, anything better than Paganism, with respect to a Mediator; nor could they, consistently with the nature of the dogmas and opinions which they contended for.