GNOSTICISM, Sylvester Hassell It is thought that Simon Magus, the Nicolaitans, Cerinthus, the Ophites, Sephites and Cainites, in the first century, were precursors of the Gnostics, whose system became fully developed in the second century. The three chief centers of Gnosticism were Alexandria, in Egypt, Antioch, in Syria, and Pontus, in Asia Minor. The most famous Gnostic was the Alexandrian Jew, Valentinus; his system was the most complete and consistent, and effected a fusion between nominal Christianity and the Platonic philosophy, leaving out the humbling ideas of sin, repentance and atonement, and weaving in the proud ideas of Buddhistic pantheism, man being set forth as the most perfect realization of the Divine.
This system left erect the great idol of paganism, humanity, which could behold itself deified upon the naked summits of the Valentinian metaphysics, no less than upon the golden heights of Olympus.
The Syrian Gnosis brought in the Persian or Zoroastrian idea of dualism, or the eternal existence of two first principles, one Good and the other Evil; and the system of Marcion, in Asia Minor, was distinguished by its rejection of the Old Testament and of about three fourths of the New Testament. Gnosticism was a phantasmal philosophy of evolution substituted for religion, pretending to account for evil by identifying with matter, and thus annihilating the moral nature of evil, which lies in the will of the creature violating the Divine law.
Gnosticism flourished in the third century also, and did not finally disappear until the sixth century. (Hassell’s History ppg 365, 366)
This was an aggregation of corruptions from all the countries where Christianity was disseminated—a combination of Platonic philosophy, Alexandrian Judaism, dualistic Parsism, pantheistic Buddhism, and phantasmal Christianity. A false Gnosticism exalted knowledge above faith, hope, love, humility, and every other Christian virtue. It represented God as an infinite, unfathomable, unnameable abyss, eternally and unconsciously evolving attributes or aeons, the lowest of which, falling, combined with dead, empty, eternal matter, and produced a weak or evil Demiurgus or Artificer who made this world; it represented Christ as the most perfect of the aeons, but declared his human life an illusion; and it represented the Holy Spirit as a subordinate aeon. The system degenerated into utter infidelity and sensuality, especially with the Ophite Gnostics. It originated in the first century, flourished in the second, and gradually lost importance after the middle of the third, but was to a great degree revived in the Manichaeism of the fourth and fifth centuries.” (Hassell’s History ppg 241, 242) (See also under The School at ALEXANDRIA)