Clearly the sacred tradition which, as Drach explains, foreshadowed the doctrines of Christianity.[73] It was the Rabbis who perverted that tradition, and thus "the guilt of these perfidious Doctors consisted in their concealing from the people the traditional explanation of the sacred books by means of which they would have been able to recognize the Messiah in the person of Jesus Christ."[74] Many of the people, however, did recognize Him; indeed, the mult.i.tude acclaimed Him, spreading their garments before Him and crying, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord!" Writers who have cited the choice of Barabbas in the place of Christ as an instance of misguided popular judgement, overlook the fact that this choice was not spontaneous; it was the Chief Priests who delivered Christ "from envy" and who "moved the people that Pilate should rather release unto them Barabbas." _Then_ the people obediently cried out, "Crucify Him!"
So also it was the Rabbis who, after hiding from the people the meaning of the sacred tradition at the moment of its fulfilment, afterwards poisoned that same stream for future generations. Abominable calumnies on Christ and Christianity occur not only in the Cabala but in the earlier editions of the Talmud. In these, says Barclay--
Our Lord and Saviour is "that one," "such a one," "a fool," "the leper," "the deceiver of Israel," etc. Efforts are made to prove that He is the son of Joseph Pandira before his marriage with Mary.
His miracles are attributed to sorcery, the secret of which He brought in a slit in His flesh out of Egypt. He is said to have been first stoned and then hanged on the eve of the Pa.s.sover. His disciples are called heretics and opprobrious names. They are accused of immoral practices, and the New Testament is called a sinful book. The references to these subjects manifest the most bitter aversion and hatred.[75]
One might look in vain for pa.s.sages such as these in English or French translations of the Talmud, for the reason that no complete translation exists in these languages. This fact is of great significance. Whilst the sacred books of every other important religion have been rendered into our own tongue and are open to everyone to study, the book that forms the foundation of modern Judaism is closed to the general public.
We can read English translations of the Koran, of the Dhammapada, of the Sutta Nipata, of the Zend Avesta, of the Shu King, of the Laws of Manu, of the Bhagavadgita, but we cannot read the Talmud. In the long series of Sacred Books of the East the Talmud finds no place. All that is accessible to the ordinary reader consists, on one hand, in expurgated versions or judicious selections by Jewish and pro-Jewish compilers, and, on the other hand, in "anti-Semitic" publications on which it would be dangerous to place reliance. The princ.i.p.al English translation by Rodkinson is very incomplete, and the folios are nowhere indicated, so that it is impossible to look up a pa.s.sage.[76] The French translation by Jean de Pauly[B] professes to present the entire text of the Venetian Talmud of 1520, but it does nothing of the kind.[77] The translator, in the Preface, in fact admits that he has left out "sterile discussions"
and has throughout attempted to tone down "the brutality of certain expressions which offend our ears." This of course affords him infinite lat.i.tude, so that all pa.s.sages likely to prove displeasing to the "Hebraisants," to whom his work is particularly dedicated, are discreetly expunged. Jean de Pauly"s translation of the Cabala appears, however, to be complete.[78] But a fair and honest rendering of the whole Talmud into English or French still remains to be made.
Moreover, even the Hebrew scholar is obliged to exercise some discrimination if he desires to consult the Talmud in its original form. For by the sixteenth century, when the study of Hebrew became general amongst Christians, the antisocial and anti-Christian tendencies of the Talmud attracted the attention of the Censor, and in the Bale Talmud of 1581 the most obnoxious pa.s.sages and the entire treatise Abodah Zara were suppressed.[79]
In the Cracow edition of 1604 that followed, these pa.s.sages were restored by the Jews, a proceeding which aroused so much indignation amongst Christian students of Hebrew that the Jews became alarmed.
Accordingly a Jewish synod, a.s.sembled in Poland in 1631, ordered the offending pa.s.sages to be expunged again, but--according to Drach--to be replaced by circles which the Rabbis were to fill in orally when giving instruction to young Jews.[80] After that date the Talmud was for a time carefully bowdlerized, so that in order to discover its original form it is advisable to go back to the Venetian Talmud of 1520 before any omissions were made, or to consult a modern edition. For now that the Jews no longer fear the Christians, these pa.s.sages are all said to have been replaced and no attempt is made, as in the Middle Ages, to prove that they do not refer to the Founder of Christianity.[81]
Thus the _Jewish Encyclopaedia_ admits that Jewish legends concerning Jesus are found in the Talmud and Midrash and in "the life of Jesus (Toledot Yeshu) that originated in the Middle Ages. It is the tendency of all these sources to belittle the person of Jesus by ascribing to Him illegitimate birth, magic, and a shameful death."[82]
The last work mentioned, the _Toledot Yeshu_, or the _Sepher Toldos Jeschu_, described here as originating in the Middle Ages, probably belongs in reality to a much earlier period. Eliphas Levi a.s.serts that "the Sepher Toldos, to which the Jews attribute a great antiquity and which they hid from the Christians with such precautions that this book was for a long while unfindable, is quoted for the first time by Raymond Martin of the Order of the Preaching Brothers towards the end of the thirteenth century.... This book was evidently written by a Rabbi initiated into the mysteries of the Cabala."[83] Whether then the Toledot Yeshu had existed for many centuries before it was first brought to light or whether it was a collection of Jewish traditions woven into a coherent narrative by a thirteenth-century Rabbi, the ideas it contains can be traced back at least as far as the second century of the Christian era. Origen, who in the middle of the third century wrote his reply to the attack of Celsus on Christianity, refers to a scandalous story closely resembling the Toledot Yeshu, which Celsus, who lived towards the end of the second century, had quoted on the authority of a Jew.[84] It is evident, therefore, that the legend it contains had long been current in Jewish circles, but the book itself did not come into the hands of Christians until it was translated into Latin by Raymond Martin. Later on Luther summarized it in German under the name of _Schem Hamphorasch_; Wagenseil in 1681 and Huldrich in 1705 published Latin translations.[85] It is also to be found in French in Gustave Brunei"s _Evangiles Apocryphes_.
However repugnant it is to transcribe any portion of this blasphemous work, its main outline must be given here in order to trace the subsequent course of the anti-Christian secret tradition in which, as we shall see, it has been perpetuated up to our own day. Briefly, then, the Toledot Yeshu relates with the most indecent details that Miriam, a hairdresser of Bethlehem,[86] affianced to a young man named Jochanan, was seduced by a libertine, Joseph Panther or Pandira, and gave birth to a son whom she named Johosuah or Jeschu. According to the Talmudic authors of the Sota and the Sanhedrim, Jeschu was taken during his boyhood to Egypt, where he was initiated into the secret doctrines of the priests, and on his return to Palestine gave himself up to the practice of magic.[87] The Toledot Yeshu, however, goes on to say that on reaching manhood Jeschu learnt the secret of his illegitimacy, on account of which he was driven out of the Synagogue and took refuge for a time in Galilee. Now, there was in the Temple a stone on which was engraved the Tetragrammaton or Schem Hamphorasch, that is to say, the Ineffable Name of G.o.d; this stone had been found by King David when the foundations of the Temple were being prepared and was deposited by him in the Holy of Holies. Jeschu, knowing this, came from Galilee and, penetrating into the Holy of Holies, read the Ineffable Name, which he transcribed on to a piece of parchment and concealed in an incision under his skin. By this means he was able to work miracles and to persuade the people that he was the son of G.o.d foretold by Isaiah. With the aid of Judas, the Sages of the Synagogue succeeded in capturing Jeschu, who was then led before the Great and Little Sanhedrim, by whom he was condemned to be stoned to death and finally hanged.
Such is the story of Christ according to the Jewish Cabalists, which should be compared not only with the Christian tradition but with that of the Moslems. It is perhaps not sufficiently known that the Koran, whilst denying the divinity of Christ and also the fact of His crucifixion,[88] nevertheless indignantly denounces the infamous legends concerning Him perpetuated by the Jews, and confirms in beautiful language the story of the Annunciation and the doctrine of the Miraculous Conception.[89] "Remember when the angels said, "O Mary!
verily hath G.o.d chosen thee and purified thee, and chosen thee above the women of the worlds." ... Remember when the angels said, "O Mary! verily G.o.d announceth to thee the Word from Him: His name shall be Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary, ill.u.s.trious in this world, and in the next, and one of those who have near access to G.o.d.""
The Mother of Jesus is shown to have been pure and to have "kept her maidenhood"[90]; it was the Jews who spoke against Mary "a grievous calumny."[91] Jesus Himself is described as "strengthened with the Holy Spirit," and the Jews are reproached for rejecting "the Apostle of G.o.d,"[92] to whom was given "the Evangel with its guidance and light confirmatory of the preceding Law."[93]
Thus during the centuries that saw the birth of Christianity, although other non-Christian forces arrayed themselves against the new faith, it was left to the Jews to inaugurate a campaign of vilification against the person of its Founder, whom Moslems to this day revere as one of the great teachers of the world.[94]
The Essenes
A subtler device for discrediting Christianity and undermining belief in the divine character of our Lord has been adopted by modern writers, princ.i.p.ally Jewish, who set out to prove that He belonged to the sect of the Essenes, a community of ascetics holding all goods in common, which had existed in Palestine before the birth of Christ. Thus the Jewish historian Graetz declares that Jesus simply appropriated to himself the essential features of Essenism, and that primitive Christianity was "nothing but an offshoot of Essenism."[95] The Christian Jew Dr.
Ginsburg partially endorses this view in a small pamphlet[96] containing most of the evidence that has been brought forward on the subject, and himself expresses the opinion that "it will hardly be doubted that our Saviour Himself belonged to this holy brotherhood."[97] So after representing Christ as a magician in the Toledot Yeshu and the Talmud, Jewish tradition seeks to explain His miraculous works as those of a mere healer--an idea that we shall find descending right through the secret societies to this day. Of course if this were true, if the miracles of Christ were simply due to a knowledge of natural laws and His doctrines were the outcome of a sect, the whole theory of His divine power and mission falls to the ground. This is why it is essential to expose the fallacies and even the bad faith on which the attempt to identify Him with the Essenes is based.
Now, we have only to study the Gospels carefully in order to realize that the teachings of Christ were totally different from those peculiar to the Essenes.[98] Christ did not live in a fraternity, but, as Dr.
Ginsburg himself points out, a.s.sociated with publicans and sinners. The Essenes did not frequent the Temple and Christ was there frequently. The Essenes disapproved of wine and marriage, whilst Christ sanctioned marriage by His presence at the wedding of Cana in Galilee and there turned water into wine. A further point, the most conclusive of all, Dr.
Ginsburg ignores, namely, that one of the princ.i.p.al traits of the Essenes which distinguished them from the other Jewish sects of their day was their disapproval of ointment, which they regarded as defiling, whilst Christ not only commended the woman who brought the precious jar of ointment, but reproached Simon for the omission: "My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed My feet with ointment." It is obvious that if Christ had been an Essene but had departed from His usual custom on this occasion out of deference to the woman"s feelings, he would have understood why Simon had not offered Him the same attention, and at any rate Simon would have excused himself on these grounds. Further, if His disciples had been Essenes, would they not have protested against this violation of their principles, instead of merely objecting that the ointment was of too costly a kind?
But it is in attributing to Christ the Communistic doctrines of the Essenes that Dr. Ginsburg"s conclusions are the most misleading--a point of particular importance in view of the fact that it is on this false hypothesis that so-called "Christian Socialism" has been built up. "The Essenes," he writes, "had all things in common, and appointed one of the brethren as steward to manage the common bag; so the primitive Christians (Acts ii. 44, 45, iv. 32-4; John xii. 6, xiii. 29)." It is perfectly true that, as the first reference to the Acts testifies, some of the primitive Christians after the death of Christ formed themselves into a body having all things in common, but there is not the slightest evidence that Christ and His disciples followed this principle. The solitary pa.s.sages in the Gospel of St. John, which are all that Dr.
Ginsburg can quote in support of this contention, may have referred to an alms-bag or a fund for certain expenses, not to a common pool of all monetary wealth. Still less is there any evidence that Christ advocated Communism to the world in general. When the young man having great possessions asked what he should do to inherit eternal life, Christ told him to follow the commandments, but on the young man asking what more he could do, answered: "If thou wilt be perfect go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor." Renunciation--but not the pooling--of all wealth was thus a counsel of perfection for the few who desired to devote their lives to G.o.d, as monks and nuns have always done, and bore no relation to the Communistic system of the Essenes.
Dr. Ginsburg goes on to say: "Essenism put all its members on the same level, forbidding the exercise of authority of one over the other and enjoining mutual service; so Christ (Matt. xx. 25-8; Mark ix. 35-7, x.
42-5). Essenism commanded its disciples to call no man master upon the earth; so Christ (Matt. xxiii. 8-10)." As a matter of fact, Christ strongly upheld the exercise of authority, not only in the oft-quoted pa.s.sage, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar"s," but in His approval of the Centurion"s speech: "I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it." Everywhere Christ commends the faithful servant and enjoins obedience to masters. If we look up the reference to the Gospel of St.
Matthew where Dr. Ginsburg says that Christ commanded His disciples to call no man master on earth, we shall find that he has not only perverted the sense of the pa.s.sage but reversed the order of the words, which, following on a denunciation of the Jewish Rabbis, runs thus: "But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren.... Neither be ye called masters: for one is your master, even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant."
The apostles were therefore, never ordered to call no man master, but not to be called master themselves. Moreover, if we refer to the Greek text, we shall see that this was meant in a spiritual and not a social sense. The word for "master" here given is in the first verse d?d?s?a???, i.e. teacher, in the second, ?a????t?? literally guide, and the word is servant is d?a????s. When masters and servants in the social sense are referred to in the Gospels, the word employed for master is ?????? and for servant d?????.
Dr. Ginsburg should have been aware of this distinction and that the pa.s.sage in question had therefore no bearing on his argument. As a matter of fact it would appear that some of the apostles kept servants, since Christ commends them for exacting strict attention to duty:
Which of you, having a servant ploughing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, Go and sit down to meat? And will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterwards thou shalt eat and drink? Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded to him? I trow not.[99]
This pa.s.sage would alone suffice to show that Christ and His apostles did not inhabit communities where all were equal, but followed the usual practices of the social system under which they lived, though adopting certain rules, such as taking only one garment and carrying no money when they went on journeys. Those resemblances between the teaching of the Essenes and the Sermon on the Mount which Dr. Ginsburg indicates refer not to the customs of a sect, but to general precepts for human conduct--humility, meekness, charity, and so forth.
At the same time it is clear that if the Essenes in general conformed to some of the principles laid down by Christ, certain of their doctrines were completely at variance with those of Christ and of primitive Christians, in particular their custom of praying to the rising sun and their disbelief in the resurrection of the body.[100] St. Paul denounces asceticism, the cardinal doctrine of the Essenes, in unmeasured terms, warning the brethren that "in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils, ...
forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which G.o.d hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of G.o.d is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving ... If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ."
This would suggest that certain Essenean ideas had crept into Christian communities and were regarded by those who remembered Christ"s true teaching as a dangerous perversion.
The Essenes were therefore not Christians, but a secret society, practising four degrees of initiation, and bound by terrible oaths not to divulge the sacred mysteries confided to them. And what were those mysteries but those of the Jewish secret tradition which we now know as the Cabala? Dr. Ginsburg throws an important light on Essenism when, in one pa.s.sage alone, he refers to the obligation of the Essenes "not to divulge the secret doctrines to anyone, ... carefully to preserve the books belonging to their sect and the names of the angels or the mysteries connected with the Tetragrammaton and the other names of G.o.d and the angels, comprised in the theosophy as well as with the cosmogony which also played so important a part among the Jewish mystics and the Kabbalists."[101] The truth is clearly that the Essenes were Cabalists, though doubtless Cabalists of a superior kind. The Cabal they possessed very possibly descended from pre-Christian times and had remained uncontaminated by the anti-Christian strain introduced into it by the Rabbis after the death of Christ.[102]
The Essenes are of importance to the subject of this book as the first of the secret societies from which a direct line of tradition can be traced up to the present day. But if in this peaceful community no actually anti-Christian influence is to be discerned, the same cannot be said of the succeeding pseudo-Christian sects which, whilst professing Christianity, mingled with Christian doctrines the poison of the perverted Cabala, main source of the errors which henceforth rent the Christian Church in twain.
The Gnostics
The first school of thought to create a schism in Christianity was the collection of sects known under the generic name of Gnosticism. In its purer forms Gnosticism aimed at supplementing faith by knowledge of eternal verities and at giving a wider meaning to Christianity by linking it up with earlier faiths. "The belief that the divinity had been manifested in the religious inst.i.tutions of all nations"[103] thus led to the conception of a sort of universal religion containing the divine elements of all.
Gnosticism, however, as the _Jewish Encyclopaedia_ points out, "was Jewish in character long before it became Christian."[104] M. Matter indicates Syria and Palestine as its cradle and Alexandria as the centre by which it was influenced at the time of its alliance with Christianity. This influence again was predominantly Jewish. Philo and Aristobulus, the leading Jewish philosophers of Alexandria, "wholly attached to the ancient religion of their fathers, both resolved to adorn it with the spoils of other systems and to open to Judaism the way to immense conquests."[105] This method of borrowing from other races and religions those ideas useful for their purpose has always been the custom of the Jews. The Cabala, as we have seen, was made up of these heterogeneous elements. And it is here we find the princ.i.p.al progenitor of Gnosticism. The Freemason Ragon gives the clue in the words: "The Cabala is the key of the occult sciences. The Gnostics were born of the Cabalists."[106]
For the Cabala was much older than the Gnostics. Modern historians who date it merely from the publication of the Zohar by Moses de Leon in the thirteenth century or from the school of Luria in the sixteenth century obscure this most important fact which Jewish savants have always clearly, recognized.[107] The _Jewish Encyclopaedia_, whilst denying the certainty of connexion between Gnosticism and the Cabala, nevertheless admits that the investigations of the anti-Cabalist Graetz "must be resumed on a new basis," and it goes on to show that "it was Alexandria of the first century, or earlier, with her strange commingling of Egyptian, Chaldean, Judean, and Greek culture which furnished soil and seeds for that mystic philosophy."[108] But since Alexandria was at the same period the home of Gnosticism, which was formed from the same elements enumerated here, the connexion between the two systems is clearly evident. M. Matter is therefore right in saying that Gnosticism was not a defection from Christianity, but a combination of systems into which a few Christian elements were introduced. The result of Gnosticism was thus not to christianize the Cabala, but to cabalize Christianity by mingling its pure and simple teaching with theosophy and even magic. The _Jewish Encyclopaedia_ quotes the opinion that "the central doctrine of Gnosticism--a movement closely connected with Jewish mysticism--was nothing else than the attempt to liberate the soul and unite it with G.o.d"; but as this was apparently to be effected "through the employment of mysteries, incantations, names of angels," etc., it will be seen how widely even this phase of Gnosticism differs from Christianity and identifies itself with the magical Cabala of the Jews.
Indeed, the man generally recognized as the founder of Gnosticism, a Jew commonly known as Simon Magus, was not only a Cabalist mystic but avowedly a magician, who with a band of Jews, including his master Dositheus and his disciples Menander and Cerinthus, inst.i.tuted a priesthood of the Mysteries and practised occult arts and exorcisms.[109] It was this Simon of whom we read in the Acts of the Apostles that he "bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one: to whom they all gave heed from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of G.o.d," and who sought to purchase the power of the laying on of hands with money.
Simon, indeed, crazed by his incantations and ecstasies, developed megalomania in an acute form, arrogating to himself divine honours and aspiring to the adoration of the whole world. According to a contemporary legend, he eventually became sorcerer to Nero and ended his life in Rome.[110]
The prevalence of sorcery amongst the Jews during the first century of the Christian era is shown by other pa.s.sages in the Acts of the Apostles; in Paphos the "false prophet," a Jew, whose surname was Bar-Jesus, otherwise known as "Elymas the sorcerer," opposed the teaching of St. Paul and brought on himself the imprecation: "O full of all subtlety and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?"
Perversion is the keynote of all the debased forms of Gnosticism.
According to Eliphas Levi, certain of the Gnostics introduced into their rites that profanation of Christian mysteries which was to form the basis of black magic in the Middle Ages.[111] The glorification of evil, which plays so important a part in the modern revolutionary movement, const.i.tuted the creed of the Ophites, who worshipped the Serpent (?f??) because he had revolted against Jehovah, to whom they referred under the Cabalistic term of the "demiurgus,"[112] and still more of the Cainites, so-called from their cult of Cain, whom, with Dathan and Abiram, the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, and finally Judas Iscariot, they regarded as n.o.ble victims of the demiurgus.[113]
Animated by hatred of all social and moral order, the Cainites "called upon all men to destroy the works of G.o.d and to commit every kind of infamy."[114]
These men were therefore not only the enemies of Christianity but of orthodox Judaism, since it was against the Jehovah of the Jews that their hatred was particularly directed. Another Gnostic sect, the Carpocratians, followers of Carpocrates of Alexandria and his son Epipha.n.u.s--who died from his debaucheries and was venerated as a G.o.d[115]--likewise regarded all written laws, Christian or Mosaic, with contempt and recognized only the ???s?? or knowledge given to the great men of every nation--Plato and Pythagoras, Moses and Christ--which "frees one from all that the vulgar call religion" and "makes man equal to G.o.d."[116]
So in the Carpocratians of the second century we find already the tendency towards that _deification of humanity_ which forms the supreme doctrine of the secret societies and of the visionary Socialists of our day. The war now begins between the two contending principles: the Christian conception of man reaching up to G.o.d and the secret society conception of man as G.o.d, needing no revelation from on high and no guidance but the law of his own nature. And since that nature is in itself divine, all that springs from it is praiseworthy, and those acts usually regarded as sins are not to be condemned. By this line of reasoning the Carpocratians arrived at much the same conclusions as modern Communists with regard to the ideal social system. Thus Epipha.n.u.s held that since Nature herself reveals the principle of the community and the unity of all things, human laws which are contrary to this law of Nature are so many culpable infractions of the legitimate order of things. Before these laws were imposed on humanity everything was in common--land, goods, and women. According to certain contemporaries, the Carpocratians returned to this primitive system by inst.i.tuting the community of women and indulging in every kind of licence.
The further Gnostic sect of Ant.i.tacts, following this same cult of human nature, taught revolt against all positive religion and laws and the necessity for gratifying the flesh; the Adamites of North Africa, going a step further in the return to Nature, cast off all clothing at their religious services so as to represent the primitive innocence of the garden of Eden--a precedent followed by the Adamites of Germany in the fifteenth century.[117]
These Gnostics, says Eliphas Levi, under the pretext of "spiritualizing matter, materialized the spirit in the most revolting ways.... Rebels to the hierarchic order, ... they wished to subst.i.tute the mystical licence of sensual pa.s.sions to wise Christian sobriety and obedience to laws....
Enemies of the family, they wished to produce sterility by increasing debauchery."[118]
By way of systematically perverting the doctrines of the Christian faith the Gnostics claimed to possess the true versions of the Gospels, and professed belief in these to the exclusion of all the others.[119] Thus the Ebionites had their own corrupted version of the Gospel of St.
Matthew founded on the "Gospel of the Hebrews," known earlier to the Jewish Christians; the Marcosians had their version of St. Luke, the Cainites their own "Gospel of Judas," and the Valentinians their "Gospel of St. John." As we shall see later, the Gospel of St. John is the one that throughout the war on Christianity has been specially chosen for the purpose of perversion.
Of course this spirit of perversion was nothing new; many centuries earlier the prophet Isaiah had denounced it in the words: "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness!" But the role of the Gnostics was to reduce perversion to a system by binding men together into sects working under the guise of enlightenment in order to obscure all recognized ideas of morality and religion. It is this which const.i.tutes their importance in the history of secret societies.
Whether the Gnostics themselves can be described as a secret society, or rather as a ramification of secret societies, is open to question. M.
Matter, quoting a number of third-century writers, shows the possibility that they had mysteries and initiations; the Church Fathers definitely a.s.serted this to be the case.[120] According to Tertullian, the Valentinians continued, or rather perverted, the mysteries of Eleusis, out of which they made a "sanctuary of prost.i.tution."[121]