Irenæus, speaking of Cerinthus and his doctrines, says:
"He represents Jesus as the son of Joseph and Mary, according to the ordinary course of human generation, and _not_ as having been born of a virgin. He believed nevertheless that he was more righteous, prudent and wise than most men, and that _the Christ_ descended upon, and entered into him, at the time of his baptism."[136:3]
The _Docetes_ were a numerous and learned sect of Asiatic Christians who invented the _Phantastic_ system, which was afterwards promulgated by the Marcionites, the Manicheans, and various other sects.
They denied the truth and authenticity of the Gospels, as far as they related to the conception of Mary, the birth of Jesus, and the thirty years that preceded the exercise of his ministry.
Bordering upon the Jewish and Gentile world, the _Cerinthians_ labored to reconcile the _Gnostic_ and the _Ebionite_, by confessing in the _same Messiah_ the supernatural union of a man and a god; and this _mystic_ doctrine was adopted, with many fanciful improvements, by many sects. The hypothesis was this: that Jesus of Nazareth was a mere mortal, the legitimate son of Joseph and Mary, but he was _the best_ and wisest of the human race, selected as the worthy instrument to restore upon earth the worship of the true and supreme Deity. When he was baptized in the Jordan, _and not till then_, he became _more than man_. At that time, _the Christ_, the first of the _Æons_, the Son of God himself, descended on Jesus in the form of a dove, _to inhabit his mind_, and direct his actions during the allotted period of _his ministry_. When he was delivered into the hands of the Jews, _the Christ_ forsook him, flew back to the world of spirits, and left the _solitary Jesus_ to suffer, to complain, and to die. This is why he said, while hanging on the cross: "My God! My God! why hast thou forsaken me?"[137:1]
Here, then, we see the _first_ budding out of--what was termed by the _true_ followers of Jesus--_heretical doctrines_. The time had not yet come to make Jesus _a god_, to claim that he had been born of a virgin. As he _must_, however, have been different from other mortals--throughout the period of his ministry, at least--the Christ _must_ have entered into him at the time of his baptism, and _as mysteriously_ disappeared when he was delivered into the hands of the Jews.