Consider that text-" all who believed were of one heart and one soul," and then you will understand this

"I and the Father are one."'1 Again, when Jesus was accused of blasphemy for saying-I and the Father are one-he quoted the words of the Psalmist

I said ye are Gods,'-and asked, 'If he called them Gods, unto whom the word of God came, say ye of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, thou blasphemest, because I said, I am the Son of God?' The pretensions of Jesus, in the opinion of the Gnostic Evangelist, fall therefore infinitely short of equality with the Father.

Can we trace Johannine Gnosticism in other passages of New Testament Scripture? In the Epistle to the Colossians we read-'Who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him were all things created in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him and unto him; and he is before all things, and in him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the Church: who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in all things he might have the pre-eminence. For the entire PLEROMA was pleased to dwell in him' (or eva vtậ εὐδόκησε πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα κατοικήσαι).

This passage is quite as Gnostic as the exordium of Pseudo-John. In the First-born of all creation' we have the Monogenes of Valentinus, from whom proceeded the celestial Eons, and through whom all things came into existence. In 'dominions, principalities, and

1 Against Celsus, viii. 12.

John x. 35, 36.

A A

3 Col. i,

powers,' we find the terminology of Basilides for Eonic Emanations; and, when the author or interpolator of the Epistle to the Colossians affirms that the entire Pleroma dwelt in Jesus, he simply reproduces the Valentinian fiction that each inember of the Eonic group had bestowed his highest attribute on Christ. What, therefore, means the language of the Authorised Version For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell'?

The primary meaning of the word Pleroma is fulness or completeness; and in this sense the term was adopted by Valentinus and his disciples as the title of the Eonic group completing the number of thirty divine Emanations. But all this had been, for centuries, forgotten when the Reformers translated Scripture in harmony with the foregone conclusions of contemporary theology; and in the arbitrary introduction of the Father, they simply followed in the footsteps of primitive compilers of Scripture, who introduced into the text what, in their opinion, ought to have been found there.

We have named the interpolation as Colossians i. 15-19. But, as the twelfth and thirteenth verses reproduce the Valentinian terminology of light and darkness,' and as the twentieth verse is involved both in the Greek and English versions, the interpolation probably embraces the entire passage from the twelfth to the twenty-second verse.

Valentinian theosophy again appears in Colossians ii. 9 ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ κατοικεῖ πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα τῆς θεότητος σwμаTIK@s-which we translate, For in him the entire Pleroma of Divinity wholly dwelleth.' This Gnostic phraseology is changed in the Epistle to the Ephesians

iii. 19, into wâν тò пλńрwμα тOû coûthe entire Pleroma of God.'

The Greek word dtáv (Eon), signifying an age, a generation, or time everlasting, having been adopted by Valentinus as the title of the divine Emanations, the following Gnostic passage has been misinterpreted by English translators :τὸ μυστήριον τὸ ἀποκεκρυμμένον ἀπὸ τῶν αἰώνων καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν γενεῶν - thus rendered in the A.V., 'Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations' (Col. i. 26). We,

however, translate- The mystery concealed from the Æons and from their offspring.' And thus, through the discovery of the verbal fossils of Gnosticism, we learn that the Pauline epistles, which invest the Son of Man with a mysterious Divinity unknown to the School of Galilee, are interpolated versions of the second century, or the actual works of the Gnostic writers of the same era, who borrowed the name of an apostle to authenticate the newly discovered Divinity of the Hebrew Messiah. But this question being once raised, it is no longer dependent on merely verbal criticism; for no knowledge of ancient languages is necessary to determine that the Gospel of Jesus contains no mystery, and that the concealment of the alleged mystery from 'ages and from generations,' conveys no intelligible meaning.

So universal was the taint of Gnosticism in the second century, that even the Gospel of Matthew could not escape infection. What is the alleged descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus at his baptism but a Gnostic. fiction? And in the following words :-'No one knoweth the Son save the Father; neither doth any know the

Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him,' we have an obvious reproduction of the theosophy of Valentinus, who affirmed that the Father is invisible and incomprehensible to all but Monogenes, the Only-Begotten.

Reverting to our discourse on the fourth Gospel, we find that its author, having proclaimed the Logos, through his Eonic exordium, to Christians of the second century familiar with the Gnostic system, proceeds to construct the ideal career of a supernatural Being on earth, in apparent unconsciousness that no explanation has been given to the contemporaries of Jesus, of the pre-existent divinity of a man, whom they can have only known as the son of Galilean peasants. He accordingly transforms the Messiah into an incomprehensible mystic, speaking in terms so vague of his superhuman origin and divine mission, as to be quite unintelligible to Jews, expectant of a merely human Messiah.

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Thus Jesus says, 'If a man keep my word, he shall never see death.' The Jews inquire, Art thou greater than Abraham and the Prophets who are dead?' Jesus answers, 'Your Father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it, and was glad.' Thou art not yet fifty years old,' exclaim the Jews, and hast thou seen Abraham?' Jesus answers, Before Abraham was, I AM.' Is it through insoluble enigmas that the Hebrew Messiah sought to win his countrymen for the Kingdom of Heaven? Can any candid and impartial student of the Logia of Matthew believe that the Son of Man ever claimed the title of Jehovah ?

Again, the Gnostic Evangelist depicts Jesus saying,

1 Matt. xi. 27.

John viii.

'I am the Door of the sheep; all that came before me are thieves and robbers.' In what sense was a Hebrew audience to understand this sweeping denunciation of Moses and the Prophets?

'Jesus said to those Jews which had believed on him, If ye abide in my word, then are ye truly my disciples, and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered, We be Abraham's seed, and have never yet been in bondage to any man; how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?' Then ensues an acrimonious discussion, in which the Gnostic Jesus applies to his recent converts the epithet of children. of the devil!'

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These are but a few of many instances through which Pseudo-John robs Jesus of the dignity of Humanity to invest him with the glamour of Divinity. Is not the time come for all who reverence the memory of the Preacher on the Mount to vindicate his character by final disavowal of the Gnostic Evangelist?

The Gnostic source of the fourth Gospel is, furthermore, disclosed in its careful exclusion of all which would have interfered with the theory of Divinity. The supernatural birth is irreconcilable with the doctrine of the Logos, and therefore finds no place in its pages. Monogenes, descending from heaven as the Saviour of the world, could not have been begotten by the Holy Spirit, tempted by Satan, or consoled by Moses and Elias; nor could he have suffered mental agony before or during the crucifixion. These evangelical episodes are, therefore, rejected by Pseudo-John; and Monogenes, in harmony with the Gnostic theory of an impassible Saviour, uncomplainingly fulfils the prophetic