The Gnostics

When this work first appeared, three-and-twenty years ago, it

became at once an object of unmerited abuse, and of equally

unmerited praise. Small divines mistaking it for an insidious

attempt to overthrow opinions " as by law established," spurted

at it with pens dipped in the milk of the Gospel; whilst, under

the very same hallucination, " Friends of Light " lauded it to

the skies-either party equally ignorant both of the subject,

and of the purpose of my labours. One noted Zoihis (whose

recollections of Homer would seem to be of the same deeplymarked

nature as Ensign Blifil's) is disgusted at my citing

" Aidoneus " as a title of the God of the Shades; another is

astonished at my ignorance in calling Bardanes a Persian,

whereas he was a native of Pontus; not understanding that

my argument was equally valid in spite of the mistake-Pontus

being originally a province of the empire of Darius, and what

is more to the purpose, the actual focus whence Mithraicism

diffused itself over the Eoman world.