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necessary to salvation, but a practical obedience to its moral precepts. Of this representation the impostors availed themselves; and, taking the works of the law to mean virtuous actions, they taught their followers the very gratifying doctrine, that salvation was obtained by grace, not by good works, and that therefore they were free to commit whatever enormities their wishes might suggest.

Such were the leading opinions which formed the gnostic system; and so true is the representation of the apostle, that they made the gospel a pretext to encourage impurities, denied God, the only supreme ruler, and our Lord Jesus Christ. The author of the epistle to the Trallians asserts with the utmost truth of these base authors, that they spoke of Christ not that they might preach Christ, but that they might supersede him; and that they professed the law, in order to establish a system of iniquity. I shall subjoin to this ac count four observations, which appear to me facts of great importance, and which subsequent inquiry will more abundantly verify.

First. The gnostics were not mistaken friends, but malignant, yet concealed, enemies of the gospel. This follows from the unparalleled wickedness of those men, as described by the apostles, by Josephus, and by the fathers; and from the nature of the system itself, which is a

fiction too wild and monstrous to have been seriously believed by any. The description given of them in the New Testament supposes their cunning and malice against the gospel, though professing to believe it. The beloved disciple gives them and their doctrine the emphatic name of Antichrist. 1 John iv. 23. Peter, Paul, and Jude, describe them as scoffers of that religion which they professed to teach; as mockers and revilers of God; as men who cunningly introduced themselves into the christian church. In this they precisely agree with Josephus, who represents them as men who trampled on the divine laws, and scoffed at the oracles of the prophets. The apostle Paul in several places has drawn their character and views in the foulest colours of duplicity and baseness. He speaks of them as men not weak but wicked; not mistaken in judgment, but depraved in heart; as men who abandoned the faith, because they first made shipwreck of conscience. 1 Tim. i. 19. What can more clearly prove, than the following description, that the apostle understood the scheme of the false teachers in the very light in which it is placed in these pages? "For such are false apostles, men of deceitful actions; transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder: for Satan himself putteth on the appearance

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of minister of righteousness; whose end will be according to their works." 2 Cor. xi. 13.

Secondly. The gnostic system was formed soon after the promulgation of the gospel, and preached in every place where the gospel had been previously proclaimed. The authors, and their agents, appear to have followed the apostles in every quarter; and to have introduced it into all the churches which they had founded, the church of Jerusalem, as it seems from the epistle to the Hebrews, not to be excepted. The prevalence of these destructive heresies was the means in the hands of Providence to call forth the apostolical epistles; and the obscure and disputed parts of those epistles can be understood and decided, only by comparing them with the errors, which they were intended to correct. This will open a new field of biblical inquiry; and afford the happy prospect of bringing to an end those unfortunate disputes, which have for ages divided the members, and kindled the animosities of the christian church.

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Thirdly. A considerable proportion of the scribes and pharisees at an early period embraced the gnostic system, as the most likely means to defeat the gospel. Their number continually increased, till the commencement of the Jewish war, when the main body of the ntion

divided into two parties-those who received the spiritual judaism unfolded by Jesus, and those who, determined to oppose it, apostatised from Moses and the prophets. This, I presume, will appear a fact, from those parts of the christian scriptures which are levelled against the impostors; and from the writings of Josephus, which represent the zealots as prevailing over the wise and prudent part of the nation, in occasioning the war, and thus ruining their country.

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Lastly. The deceivers were very successful, by means of their system, in counteracting the gospel, and seducing multitudes from the original purity of its faith and practice. They studiously accommodated their tenets to the prepossessions of those whom they sought to delude; and their fair profession and studied duplicity could not fail of alluring the unstable, and betraying the unwary into their snares. One of their principal artifices was, to mix as friends in the love-feasts of the christians, and then, after entangling the less prudent of the members in some irregularities, expose them and their profession to public reproach. Their pretensions to superior knowledge, and the study of magic, in which they were skilful, gave them an easy ascendancy over the unlettered, and enabled them the more effectually to pervert the truth. Hence Irenæus, in his preface, says of them with justice, "Some

sent against the truth introduce lying and vain genealogies, which, as the apostle says, afford disputations rather than edification in the faith; and by a specious appearance of probability, which they craftily study, they pervert the un derstanding of the unlettered, and make captives of them, by cunningly using the oracles of the Lord, and basely expounding the fair things said by him. They subvert many, and lead them astray from him, who framed and adjusted the universe, under the pretence of knowing something superior and more exalted than the Creator."

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Our Lord had a full and distinct foreknow. ledge of the impostors, and in the most solemn manner cautioned his virtuous followers against the melancholy consequences of their hypocrisy and falsehoods. "Beware of those false teachers, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but in wardly are ravening wolves." Matt, vii. 15. And again, xxiv. 24: "There shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and they shall shew great signs and wonders, insomuch that, if it were pos sible, they shall deceive the very elect." These warnings were in a few years justified by the event. A great part of the apostolical epistles bespeak the baleful effects of the gnostic heresy; and from the words of Paul to the Galatian church, we may fairly judge of those effects in all

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