"Gnostic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Michael. The cultus of the holy angels is of Jewish origin and existed in the Christian Church from the beginning. In St. Paul's Epistle to the Colossians (modern Khonus on the Lycus) he speaks of this devotion and of the attempts of a Gnostic sect to spread false doctrines on this point (Col. ii, 18). Although the evil wrought was long lived, true devotion to the angels was practised in Colossae and there the Archangel Michael appeared. In honour of this apparition, the festival of St. Michael ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... Mr. Taylor shows that the Church, A.D. 300, was essentially corrupt in doctrine and practice; that the Romish Church was rather an improvement on it; that Jerome, Ambrose, Gregory, and Athanasius are full of false doctrine; and that a Gnostic theology, a Pagan asceticism, and a corrupt morality prevailed in the Church in ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... instruction, yet plainly are not so instructive as others, in which the innermost heart of the thing named so utters itself, that, having mastered the name, we have placed ourselves at the central point, from whence best to master everything besides. It is thus with 'Gnostic' and 'Gnosticism'; in the prominence given to gnosis or knowledge, as opposed to faith, lies the key to the whole system. The Greek Church has loved ever to style itself the Holy 'Orthodox' Church, the Latin, the Holy 'Catholic' Church. Follow up the thoughts which these words suggest. What ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... creation that on both sides the need of mediation or a mediator was deeply felt. The Jewish God was little better than the Epicurean. If the Epicureans taught that there probably is a God, but that the world is of no concern to Him, so among the Jews of the first century gnostic ideas prevailed, according to which not the highest but a subordinate God created and ruled the world. The task of creation seemed unworthy of the supreme God. Philo therefore seized the Stoic idea of the Logos or Logoi in ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are, specifically, three distinct Gods; and to Dualism, which teaches that there are two independent divine beings or eternal principles, the one good, and the other evil, as set forth especially in Gnostic ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... various opinions held by other sects. Here too the two accounts are in the main similar, except that Aaron ben Elijah is somewhat more detailed and names a few sects not mentioned by Maimonides, among them being the Manicheans and the followers of the Syrian Gnostic Bardesanes. In their own views, however, Aaron ben Elijah and Maimonides differ; the latter approaching the view of Aristotle, the former ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... God-crowned summit, the Naza- rene stepped suddenly before the people and their schools of philosophy; Gnostic, Epicurean, and Stoic. He must stem these rising angry elements, and walk serenely over their fretted, ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... (murshid) for the future. He then enters upon a course of instruction and discipline, called a "path" (tar[i]qa), on which he advances through diverse "stations" (maq[a]m[a]t) or "passes" ('aqab[a]t) of the spiritual life. There is a striking resemblance here to the gnostic system, with its seven Archon-guarded gates. On another side, it is plain that the sheikh, along with ordinary instruction of the novice, also hypnotizes him and causes him to see a series of visions, marking his penetration of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... shameful acts ... I know not.' In a few years the language of doubt and insinuation was exchanged for that of direct assertion; and if we may believe St. Irenaeus and St. Clement of Alexandria, the followers of Carpocrates, the Marcionites, and some other gnostic sects habitually indulged, in their secret meetings, in acts of impurity and licentiousness as hideous and as monstrous as can be conceived, and their conduct was one of the causes of the persecution of the orthodox."[126] Tertullian accused some of the sects of practising incestuous intercourse ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... fan the fire of an unassuageable gnostic thirst, which is as far removed from theism in one direction as agnosticism was removed from it in the other; and which aspires to nothing less than an absolute unity of knowledge with its object, and refuses to be satisfied short of a fusion and solution and ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... leaving the trap in which his tail remained, he presented himself to his normally elongated companions. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "Agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "Gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at our Society to show that I, too, had a tail like the ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... Hebrew, Rabbinist, Rabbist^, Sadducee; Babist^, Motazilite; Mohammedan, Mussulman, Moslem, Shiah, Sunni, Wahabi, Osmanli. Brahmin^, Brahman^; Parsee, Sufi, Buddhist; Magi, Gymnosophist^, fire worshiper, Sabian, Gnostic, Rosicrucian &c Adj. heterodox, heretical; unorthodox, unscriptural, uncanonical; antiscriptural^, apocryphal; unchristian, antichristian^; schismatic, recusant, iconoclastic; sectarian; dissenting, dissident; secular &c, (lay) 997. pagan; heathen, heathenish; ethnic, ethnical; gentile, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... plainly enough reveals itself. Whether it belongs to the class of Fetish-worships, or of Hero-worships or Polytheisms, or to what other class, may in the present state of our intelligence remain undecided (schweben). A certain touch of Manicheism, not indeed in the Gnostic shape, is discernible enough: also (for human Error walks in a cycle, and reappears at intervals) a not-inconsiderable resemblance to that Superstition of the Athos Monks, who by fasting from all nourishment, and looking intensely for a length of time into their own navels, came to ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... bounds of her liberty, and as by some providential power within her, [127] she gathers and serviceably adopts, as in other matters so in ritual, one thing here, another there, from various sources—Gnostic, Jewish, Pagan—to adorn and beautify the greatest act of worship the world has seen. It was thus the liturgy of the church came to be—full of consolations for the human soul, and destined, surely! one day, under the sanction of so many ages of human experience, to take ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... Let not the non-gnostic portion of our readers imagine, that if they haunt the justice-seat of Birnie and his judicial co-mates, that they will ever witness such pleasant, sparkling, humorous examinations as those reported in the columns of the papers which matinally grace their breakfast-tables. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... sects developed from the Gnostic systems, assigned great power to stone amulets, and prepared them for their initiates, who used them for identification and for curative purposes. They quickly acquired a celebrity undiminished for ages, and were known under the general name of Abraxas. They were composed of various materials, ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... A highly secretive tradition and a closed community that derives from the Ismaili sect of Islam; its core beliefs are thought to emphasize a combination of Gnostic principles believing that the Fatimid caliph, al-Hakin, is the one who embodies the key aspects of goodness of the universe, which are, the intellect, the word, the soul, the preceder, and the follower. The Druze have a key presence in Syria, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... in it to be divine," said Rose, taking it from Lu's hand and bringing it back to me. "All those very Gnostic deities who assisted at Creation. You are not afraid that the imprisoned things work their spells upon you? The oracle declares it suits your cousin best," he added, in a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... Palestine, the Sadducees, Samaritans, Pharisees, and Essenes, represented there too, but in addition there were parties who attached themselves to one or other of the Greek schools, the Pythagoreans, Skeptics, and the like, and lastly Gnostic groups, who cultivated an esoteric doctrine of the Godhead, and were lax in their observance of the law, which they held to be purely symbolical and of no account in its literal meaning. The mental activity which this growth of sects exemplified was in some respects a healthy sign, ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... with his present corporeal organization. Hence they rejected the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. When Paul asks the Corinthians—"How say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?" [204:6]—he alludes to the Gnostic denial of this article of the Christian theology. He also refers to the same circumstance when he denounces the "profane and vain babblings" of those who "concerning the truth" had erred, "saying that the resurrection is past already." ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... the law of Moses, could possibly hope for salvation!"[35] While, on the other hand, the most learned and the most wealthy of the Christian name, under the generally recognised title of "knowing" (Gnostic), had more insidiously effaced the authority of the Evangelists by dividing themselves, during the course of the third century, "into more than fifty numerably distinct sects, and producing a multitude of histories, in which the actions and discourses of Christ and ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... it, of course it may be so. But, sir, that of which my ex-associates are ignorant, and which doubtless will astonish you, is that I have been many other things,—in religion, by turns a Protestant, a Papist, an Arian and Semi-Arian, a Manichean, a Gnostic, an Adamite even and a Pre-Adamite, a Sceptic, a Pelagian, a Socinian, an Anti-Trinitarian, and a Neo-Christian; [72] in philosophy and politics, an Idealist, a Pantheist, a Platonist, a Cartesian, an Eclectic (that is, a sort of juste-milieu), ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Subsequently its use spread beyond the Gnostics, and in modern times it is applied contemptuously (e g. by the early opponents of the evolution theory) to a conception or hypothesis which purports to be a simple solution of apparently insoluble phenomena. The Gnostic physician Serenus Sammonicus gave precise instructions as to its mystical use in averting or curing agues and fevers generally. The paper on which the word was written had to be folded in the form of a cross, suspended ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... this will be more clearly seen if we reflect on the nature of the claim of the Churches to be in exclusive possession of Divine knowledge, the sole revealer of God to man. Ever since the words of the Gnostic gospeller, "He shall lead you unto all truth," were written, it has been claimed that the authentic medium of Divine communications has been a corporation or a book, one or the other being affirmed ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... respects the theological notions of these islanders resemble those of the oriental philosophers, spoken of in Mosheim's Historical Account of the Church in the First Century, to which the curious reader is referred. The Otaheitan Eatuas and the Gnostic [Greek] seem near a-kin; the generation scheme is common to both. What said the philosophers? The Supreme Being, after passing many ages in silence and inaction, did at length beget of himself, two beings of very excellent nature like his own; these, by some similar operation, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... that the author of the Revelation was a Kabalist; and the writer of the Gospel of Saint John a Gnostic or a Neoplatonist. The Gospel of Nicodemus is scarcely more than a copy of the Descent of Hercules into the Infernal Regions; the Epistle to the Corinthians is a distinct reminiscence of the initiatory Mysteries of Eleusis; and the Roman Ritual, according to H. P. Blavatsky, ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... A Gnostic sect of the 2nd century was known by the name of Cainites. They are first mentioned by Irenaeus, who connects them with the Valentinians. They believed that Cain derived his existence from the superior power, and Abel from the inferior power, and that in this respect ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Schwegler finds to the Gnostic heresies are explained when that critic at the end of his argument objects to the Epistle that it makes use of a number of writings 'the origin of which must be placed in the second century, such as the Acts, 1 Peter, the Epistles to the Philippians and ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... was based upon traditions of the past, and, of course, the possibility remains that it might have been based upon some earlier work. With regard to the antiquity of the planetary sigils, Mr MATHERS notes "that, among the Gnostic talismans in the British Museum, there is a ring of copper with the sigils of Venus, which are exactly the same as those given by ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... Diatessaron had been drawn from our four Gospels. In 1886 an Arabic version of the Diatessaron itself was found, and it {12} proved conclusively that Tatian's Diatessaron was simply a combination of our four canonical Gospels. About the same date as Tatian, a famous Gnostic writer named Heracleon wrote commentaries on Luke and John, and it can also be shown that he was acquainted with Matt. There can therefore be no doubt that all our four Gospels were well ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... Buddhist the conventional soul—the single, tenuous, tremulous, transparent inner man, or ghost—does not exist. The Oriental Ego is not individual. Nor is it even a definitely numbered multiple like the Gnostic soul. It is an aggregate or composite of inconceivable complexity,—the concentrated sum of the creative thinking of previous lives ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... of honest and laborious Christian students in the present day to explain, define, and separate. What was that Manichaanism which nearly filled Christendom for a hundred years, what was it, in great part, but an influx of tradition, speculation, imagination, and sentiment, from Persia? The Gnostic Christians even had a scripture called "Zoroaster's Apocalypse."43 "The wise men from the east," who knelt before the infant Christ, "and opened their treasures, and gave him gifts, gold, frankincense, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... benignant exceedingly, and pleasant in all his conversation." He gave good advice about earthly matters, was a faithful steward of moneys deposited with him, a guardian of widows and orphans, a righteous and loving man. In his practical life, the ascetic and gnostic element comes out strongly enough. The body, with him, was not evil, neither was it good; it was simply nothing—why care about it? He would have no portrait taken of his person: "It was humiliating enough to be obliged to carry ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... Persia, had naturally entered into the sacred books of the Hebrews. Moreover, St. Paul had distinctly declared that the gods of the heathen were devils; and everywhere the early Christians saw in disease the malignant work of these dethroned powers of evil. The Gnostic and Manichaean struggles had ripened the theologic idea that, although at times diseases are punishments by the Almighty, the main agency in them is Satanic. The great fathers and renowned leaders of the early ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... demonstration, and shows the kabalistic meanings of the whole. The Symbola Architectonica are found on the most ancient edifices; and these mathematical figures and instruments, adopted by the Templars, and identical with those on the gnostic seals and abraxæ, connect their dogma with the Chaldaic, Syriac, and Egyptian Oriental philosophy. The secret Pythagorean doctrines of numbers were preserved by the monks of Thibet, by the Hierophants of Egypt and Eleusis, at Jerusalem, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... is a talisman," she said, "Gnostic, I should think, for there is the cock upon it, and a lot that I can't read, probably a magic formula. No doubt the old Crusader got it in the East, perhaps as a gift from some Saracen in whose family it had descended. Oh! my dear ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... von Hammer-Purgstall, in his Mysterium Baphometis relevatum, &c., and Die Schuld der Templer, revived the old charge against the Templars. The word, according to his interpretation, signifies the baptism of Metis, or of fire, and is, therefore, connected with the impurities of the Gnostic Ophites (q.v.). Additional [v.03 p.0364] evidence of this, according to Hammer-Purgstall, is to be found in the architectural decorations ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... Christian writings were much employed by them. They rarely cite an apocryphal work. More than one hundred and sixty citations from the New Testament have been gathered out of their writings.(145) We may admit that these Ophites and Peratae were of early origin, the former being the oldest known of the Gnostic parties; but there is no proof that the acquaintance with the New Testament which Hippolytus attributes to them belongs to the first rather than the second half of the second century. The early existence of ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... existence of a "Logos," or Ishwara, the Lord of the Universe, who is, however, but a manifestation of Brahman—a Great Soul, as it were, and who presides over the evolution of Universes from the Prakriti, and who plays the part of the Demiurge of the old Grecian and Gnostic philosophies. The Vedantists admit the existence (relative) of Prakriti, or Universal Energy, but hold that it is not eternal, or real-in-itself, but is practically identical with Maya, and may be regarded as a form of the Creative Energy of the Absolute, ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... this second synthesis was comparatively slow. Probably some of the systems which are loosely described as gnostic were unsuccessful attempts at its accomplishment; but in the end the Alexandrian theologians Clement and Origen followed the lead given them by the Fourth Gospel and some of the apologists to the triumphant construction of a system which really reconciled in part and seemed to reconcile entirely ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... of Horapollo, Chiflet's gnostic gems, and other repertories of the same class, one might, peradventure, make a tolerable case in favour of the mythological identity of the legend of Ladybird—that is, the sun-chafer, or barn-bie, the fire-fly, "whose house is burnt, and whose bairns are ten," of course the first ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various
... otherwise it would become a collection of monographs, and thereby lose its proper value. I have endeavoured to subordinate everything to the aim of exhibiting the development which led to the ecclesiastical dogmas, and therefore have neither, for example, communicated the details of the gnostic systems, nor brought forward in detail the theological ideas of Clemens Romanus, Ignatius, etc. Even a history of Paulinism will be sought for in the book in vain. It is a task by itself, to trace the aftereffects of the theology of Paul ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack |
