pursued a similar career.  According to a very early authority, nearly all the inhabitants of his native country, and a few persons in other districts, worshipped him as the first or supreme God. [205:5] There is, probably, some exaggeration in this statement; but there seems no reason to doubt that he laid claim to extraordinary powers, maintaining that the same spirit which had been imparted to Jesus, had descended on himself.  He is also said to have denied that our Lord had a real body.  Some, who did not enrol themselves under his standard, soon partially adopted his principles; and there is cause to think that Hymenaeus, Philetus, Alexander, Phygellus, and Hermogenes, mentioned in the New Testament, [205:6] were all more or less tinctured with the spirit of Gnosticism.  Other heresiarchs, not named in the sacred record, are known to have flourished towards the close of the first century.  Of these the most famous were Carpocrates, Cerinthus, and Ebion. [206:1] There is a tradition that John, “the beloved disciple,” came in contact with Cerinthus, when going into a bath at Ephesus, and retired abruptly from the place, that he might not compromise himself by remaining in the same building with such an enemy of the Christian revelation. [206:2] It is also stated that the same apostle’s testimony to the dignity of the Word, in the beginning of his Gospel, was designed as an antidote to the errors of this heresiarch. [206:3]

When the gospel exerts its proper influence on the character it produces an enlightened, genial, and consistent piety; but a false faith is apt to lead, in practice, to one of two extremes, either the asceticism of the Essene, or the sensualism of the Sadducee.  Gnosticism developed itself in both these directions.  Some of its advocates maintained that, as matter is essentially evil, the corrupt propensities of the body should be kept in constant subjection by a life of rigorous mortification; others held that, as the principle of evil is inherent in the corporeal frame, the malady is beyond the reach of cure, and that, therefore, the animal nature should be permitted freely to indulge its peculiar appetites.  To the latter party, as some think, belonged the Nicolaitanes noticed by John in the Apocalypse. [206:4] They are said to have derived their name from Nicolas, one of the seven deacons ordained by the apostles; [206:5] and to have been a class of Gnostics noted for their licentiousness.  The origin of the designation may, perhaps, admit of some dispute; but it is certain that those to whom it was applied were alike lax in principle and dissolute in practice, for the Spirit of God has declared His abhorrence as well of the “doctrine,” as of “the deeds of the Nicolaitanes.” [207:1]