When Valentine was at Rome, Marcion, another heresiarch of the same class, was also in the great metropolis. [433:3] This man is said to have been born in Pontus, and though some of the fathers have attempted to fix a stain upon his early reputation, his subsequent character seems to have been irreproachable. [434:1] There is reason to think that he was one of the most upright and amiable of the Gnostics.  These errorists were charged by their orthodox antagonists with gross immorality; and there was often, perhaps, too much ground for the accusation; for some of them, such as Carpocrates, [434:2] avowed and encouraged the most shameless licentiousness; but others, such as Marcion, were noted for their ascetic strictness.  All the more respectable Gnostics appear to have recommended themselves to public confidence by the austerity of their discipline.  They enjoined rigorous fasting, and inculcated abstinence from wine, flesh-meat, and marriage.  The Oriental theology, as well as the Platonic philosophy, sanctioned such a mode of living; and, therefore, those by whom it was practised were in a favourable position for gaining the public ear when they came forward as theological instructors.

Gnosticism may appear to us a most fantastic system; but, in the second century, it was dreaded as a very formidable adversary by the Church; and the extent to which it spread attests that it possessed not a few of the elements of popularity.  Its doctrine of Aeons, or Divine Emanations, was quite in accordance with theories which had then gained extensive currency; and its account of the formation of the present world was countenanced by established modes of thinking.  Many who cherished a hereditary prejudice against Judaism were gratified by the announcement that the Demiurge was no other than the God of the Israelites; and many more were flattered by the statement that some souls are essentially purer and better than others. [435:1] The age was sunk in sensuality; and, as it was the great boast of the heresiarchs that their Gnosis secured freedom from the dominion of the flesh, multitudes, who secretly sighed for deliverance, were thus induced to test its efficacy.  But Gnosticism, in whatever form it presented itself, was a miserable perversion of the gospel.  Some of its teachers entirely rejected the Old Testament; others reduced its history to a myth; whilst all mutilated and misinterpreted the writings of the apostles and evangelists.  Like the Jewish Cabbalists, who made void the law of God by expositions which fancy suggested and tradition embalmed, the Gnostics by their far-fetched and unnatural comments, threw an air of obscurity over the plainest passages of the New Testament.  Some of them, aware that they could derive no support from the inspired records, actually fabricated Gospels, and affixed to them the names of apostles or evangelists, in the hope of thus obtaining credit for the spurious documents. [435:2] Whilst Gnosticism in this way set aside the