There are two or three features in which the Gnostics were the forerunners of a very different class of errors. Transubstantiation no doubt arose in time by a natural depravation of the true doctrine of the Eucharist, through the desire of defining that which Scripture and primitive tradition had left undefined. But it is curious that a hint of it should have been struck out by Marcus, one of the magical Gnostics, who, amongst other arts of legerdemain, hit upon the idea of bringing down into the wine and water _the blood of the supernal grace_, by means of an invocation(741). It is equally curious to read in the account of Carpocrates and his disciples, that they asserted that Pilate had procured a likeness of Jesus Christ to be taken, and that they set his image amongst those of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Aristotle and the rest, and decked it with chaplets, and paid to it the selfsame honours which the heathen paid to their idols(742). Nor is it less remarkable that the Gnostics in general, when refuted by the Scriptures, should have spoken in disparagement of them (as I have already pointed out) in terms singularly corresponding with those sometimes made use of by Roman controversialists: "They turn to accuse the Scriptures, as though they were not correct, nor of authority; and say that they are at variance with themselves, _neither can the truth be discovered from them by those who are ignorant of_ THEIR _tradition_(743)." Coincidences of this kind are at least curious; and the further we search the more clearly will it appear that the germs of all subsequent errors appeared in very early times.
[Transcriber's Note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected.]
1 In his "Doctrine of Scripture and of the Primitive Church upon Religious Celibacy," in reply to the author of "Antient Christianity."
2 Tertullian (_adv. Valent._ 5.) calls him _omnium doctrinarum curiosissimus explorator_.