The Gnostics and Their Remains, Ancient and Mediaeval (Classic Reprint)

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 Zoilus (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. A still greater cause of outcry against the book was my presuming to lay presumptuous hands upon the Sacred Ark of Masonry, and openly express my opinion that the Free and Accepted of these times have no more real connexion with the ancient Craft, out of whose terms and forms, like fig-leaves, they have stitched together aprons, wherewith to cover the real nakedness of their pretension, than the Italian Carbonari of Murat sday had with the trade of charcoal burners, whose baskets were borrowed for the Prebident sthrone.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology.

Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of historically important writings. Careful attention