what the school of Alexandria afterwards partially succeeded in doing.  The anticipations of Neoplatonism among the Gnostics would probably be found to be very numerous, if the victorious party had thought their writings worth preserving.  But Gnosticism was rotten before it was ripe.  Dogma was still in such a fluid state, that there was nothing to keep speculation within bounds; and the Oriental element, with its insoluble dualism, its fantastic mythology and spiritualism, was too strong for the Hellenic.  Gnosticism presents all the features which we shall find to be characteristic of degenerate Mysticism.  Not to speak of its oscillations between fanatical austerities and scandalous licence, and its belief in magic and other absurdities, we seem, when we read Irenaeus’ description of a Valentinian heretic, to hear the voice of Luther venting his contempt upon some “Geisterer” of the sixteenth century, such as Carlstadt or Sebastian Frank.  “The fellow is so puffed up,” says Irenaeus, “that he believes himself to be neither in heaven nor on earth, but to have entered within the Divine Pleroma, and to have embraced his guardian angel.  On the strength of which he struts about as proud as a cock.  These are the self-styled ‘spiritual persons,’ who say they have already reached perfection.”  The later Platonism could not even graft itself upon any of these Gnostic systems, and Plotinus rejects them as decisively as Origen.

Still closer is the approximation to later speculation which we find in Philo, who was a contemporary of St. Paul.  Philo and his Therapeutae were genuine mystics of the monastic type.  Many of them, however, had not been monks all their life, but were retired men of business, who wished to spend their old age in contemplation, as many still do in India.  They were, of course, not Christians, but Hellenised Jews, though Eusebius, Jerome, and the Middle Ages generally thought that they were Christians, and were well pleased to find monks in the first century.[112]

Philo’s object is to reconcile religion and philosophy—­in other words, Moses and Plato.[113] His method[114] is to make Platonism a development of Mosaism, and Mosaism an implicit Platonism.  The claims of orthodoxy are satisfied by saying, rather audaciously, “All this is Moses’ doctrine, not mine.”  His chief instrument in this difficult task is allegorism, which in his hands is a bad specimen of that pseudo-science which has done so much to darken counsel in biblical exegesis.  His speculative system, however, is exceedingly interesting.

God, according to Philo, is unqualified and pure Being, but not superessential.  He is emphatically [Greek:  ho on], the “I am,” and the most general ([Greek:  to genikotaton]) of existences.  At the same time He is without qualities ([Greek:  apoios]), and ineffable ([Greek:  arretos]).  In His inmost nature He is inaccessible; as it was said to Moses, “Thou shalt see what is behind Me, but My face shall not be seen.”