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and the five grades or forms of creative mind which intervene between Him and the creator-angels are added in to make up an Ogdoad, though none is recorded as acknowledged by the disciples: a combination so arbitrary and so incongruous needs no refutation. On the other hand, those five abstract names have an air of true Basilidian Hellenism, and the two systems possess at least one negative feature in common, the absence of syzygies and of all imagery connected directly with sex. On their ethical side the connexion is discerned with less difficulty. The contempt for martyrdom, which was perhaps the most notorious characteristic of the Basilidians, would find a ready excuse in their master's speculative paradox about martyrs, even if he did not discourage martyrdom himself. The silence of five years which he imposed on novices might easily degenerate into the perilous dissimulation of a secret sect, while their exclusiveness would be nourished by his doctrine of the Election; and the same doctrine might further after a while receive an antinomian interpretation. The nature of the contrast of principle in the theological part of the two creeds suggests how so great a change may have arisen. The system of Basilides was a high-pitched philosophical speculation, entirely unfitted to exercise popular influence, and transporting its adherents to a region remote from the sympathies of men imbued with the old Gnostic phantasies, while it was too artificial a compound to attract heathens or Catholic Christians. The power of mind and character which the remains of his writings disclose might easily gather round him in the first instance a crowd who, though they could enter into portions only of his teaching, might remain detached from other Gnostics, and yet in their theology relapse into "the broad highway of vulgar Gnosticism" (Baur in the Tübingen Theol. Jahrb. for 1856, pp. 158 f.), and make for themselves out of its elements, whether fortuitously or by the skill of some now forgotten leader, a new mythological combination. In this manner evolution from below might once more give place to emanation from above, Docetism might again sever heaven and earth, and a loose practical dualism (of the profounder speculative dualism of the East there is no trace) might supersede all that Basilides had taught as to the painful processes by which sonship attains its perfection. The composite character of the secondary Basilidianism may be seen at a glance in the combination of the five Greek abstractions preparatory to creation with the Semitic hosts of creative angels bearing barbaric names. Basilidianism seems to have stood alone in appropriating Abrasax; but Caulacau plays a part in more than one system, and the functions of the angels recur in various forms of Gnosticism, and especially in that derived from Saturnilus. Saturnilus likewise affords a parallel in the character assigned to the God of the Jew as an angel, and partly in the reason assigned for the Saviour's mission; while the Antitactae of Clement recall the resistance to the God of the Jews inculcated by the Basilidians. Other "Basilidian" features appear in the Pistis Sophia, viz. many barbaric names of angels

(with 365 Archons, p. 364), and elaborate collocations of heavens, and a numerical image taken from Deut. xxxii. 30 (p. 354). The Basilidian Simon of Cyrene is apparently unique.

VIII. History of the Basilidian Sect.—There is no evidence that the sect extended itself beyond Egypt; but there it survived for a long time. Epiphanius (about 375) mentions the Prosopite, Athribite, Saite, and "Alexandriopolite" (read Andropolite) nomes or cantons, and also Alexandria itself, as the places in which it still throve in his time, and which he accordingly inferred to have been visited by Basilides (68 c). All these places lie on the western side of the Delta, between Memphis and the sea. Nearer the end of cent. iv. Jerome often refers to Basilides in connexion with the hybrid Priscillianism of Spain, and the mystic names in which its votaries delighted. According to Sulpicius Severus (Chron. ii. 46) this heresy took its rise in "the East and Egypt"; but, he adds, it is not easy to say "what the beginnings were out of which it there grew" (quibus ibi initiis coaluerit). He states, however, that it was first brought to Spain by Marcus, a native of Memphis. This fact explains how the name of Basilides and some dregs of his disciples' doctrines or practices found their way to so distant a land as Spain, and at the same time illustrates the probable hybrid origin of the secondary Basilidianism itself.

IX. Literature.—Basilides of course occupies a prominent place in every treatise on Gnosticism, such as those of Neander (including the Church History), Baur (the same), Lipsius, and Möller (Geschichte der Kosmologie in der Christlichen Kirche). Two reviews by Gieseler (Halle A. L. Z. for 1823, pp. 335‒338; Studien u. Kritiken for 1830, pp. 395 ff.) contain valuable matter. The best monograph founded on the whole evidence is that of Uhlhorn (Das Basilidianische System, Göttingen, 1855), with which should be read an essay by Baur (Theol. Jahrb. for 1856, pp. 121‒162); Jacobi's monograph (Basilidis Philosophi Gnostici Sententius, etc., Berlin 1852) being also good. Able expositions of the view that the true doctrine of Basilides is not represented in the larger work of Hippolytus Against all Heresies will be found in a paper by Hilgenfeld, to which Baur's article in reply is appended (pp. 86‒121), with scattered notices in other articles of his (especially in his Zeitschrift for 1862, pp 452 ff.); and in Lipsius's Gnosticismus. Three articles by Gundert (Zeitschrift f. d. Luth. Theol. for 1855, 209 ff., and 1856, 37 ff., 443 ff.) are of less importance. The lecture on Basilides in Dr. Mansel's posthumous book on The Gnostic Heresies is able and independent and makes full use of the best German criticisms, but underrates the influence of Stoical conceptions on Basilides, and exaggerates that of Platonism; and after the example of Baur's Christliche Gnosis in respect of Gnosticism generally, though starting from an opposite point of view, it suffers from an effort to find in Basilides a precursor of Hegel. Cf. Harnack, Gesch. Alt. Chr. Lit. 1893, pp. 157‒161; Th. Zahn, Gesch. des N. T. Kanon (1888‒1889), i. 763‒774; J. Kennedy, "Buddhist Gnosticism: the System