"Gnostic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... called the Life Force, the Will to Live, the Struggle for Existence. They have figured it too as Mother Nature. We may speculate whether it is not what the wiser among the Gnostics meant by the Demiurge, but since the Christians destroyed all the Gnostic books that must remain a mere curious guess. We may speculate whether this heat and haste and wrath of life about us is the Dark God of the Manichees, the evil spirit of the sun worshippers. But in contemporary thought there is no conviction apparent that this Demiurge is either good or evil; it ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... Subsequently its use spread beyond the Gnostics, and in modern times it is applied contemptuously (e g. by the early opponents of the evolution theory) to a conception or hypothesis which purports to be a simple solution of apparently insoluble phenomena. The Gnostic physician Serenus Sammonicus gave precise instructions as to its mystical use in averting or curing agues and fevers generally. The paper on which the word was written had to be folded in the form of a cross, suspended ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... help of Horapollo, Chiflet's gnostic gems, and other repertories of the same class, one might, peradventure, make a tolerable case in favour of the mythological identity of the legend of Ladybird—that is, the sun-chafer, or barn-bie, the fire-fly, "whose house is burnt, ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various
... not.' In a few years the language of doubt and insinuation was exchanged for that of direct assertion; and if we may believe St. Irenaeus and St. Clement of Alexandria, the followers of Carpocrates, the Marcionites, and some other gnostic sects habitually indulged, in their secret meetings, in acts of impurity and licentiousness as hideous and as monstrous as can be conceived, and their conduct was one of the causes of the persecution of the orthodox."[126] Tertullian accused some of the sects of practising ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... a talisman," she said, "Gnostic, I should think, for there is the cock upon it, and a lot that I can't read, probably a magic formula. No doubt the old Crusader got it in the East, perhaps as a gift from some Saracen in whose family it had descended. Oh! my dear boy, I do thank you. You could not have made me a present that ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... it to be divine," said Rose, taking it from Lu's hand and bringing it back to me. "All those very Gnostic deities who assisted at Creation. You are not afraid that the imprisoned things work their spells upon you? The oracle declares it suits your cousin best," he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... Hebrew version of Faust, published at Vienna, is a masterpiece in point of style, and it gained him conspicuous renown. He ventured upon a bold departure from Goethe's work. Desiring to transfer the dramatic action to soil wholly Jewish, he substituted for Faust a Gnostic Rabbi of the Talmud, Elisha ben Abuyah, surnamed Aher ("Another"). This change necessitated a number of others, which were far from being advantageous to ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... Sadducee; Babist[obs3], Motazilite; Mohammedan, Mussulman, Moslem, Shiah, Sunni, Wahabi, Osmanli. Brahmin[obs3], Brahman[obs3]; Parsee, Sufi, Buddhist; Magi, Gymnosophist[obs3], fire worshiper, Sabian, Gnostic, Rosicrucian &c. Adj. heterodox, heretical; unorthodox, unscriptural, uncanonical; antiscriptural[obs3], apocryphal; unchristian, antichristian[obs3]; schismatic, recusant, iconoclastic; sectarian; dissenting, dissident; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... have been seen, therefore, that Communism was a favourite rallying-cry throughout the Middle Ages for all those on whom the oppression of the feudal yoke bore heavily. It was partly also a religious ideal for some of the strange gnostic sects which flourished at that era. Moreover, it was an efficient weapon when used as an accusation, for Wycliff and the friars alike both dreaded its imputation. Perhaps of all that period, John Ball alone held it consistently and without shame. Eloquent in the way of popular ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... Theological Polemics—disputed by Harnack, Bishop Lightfoot has dealt with the subject on its positive and negative sides respectively. The positive side yields results of real importance in attestation of the date of the letters. The heresy combated by Ignatius is a type of Gnostic Judaism, the Gnostic element manifesting itself in a sharp form of Docetism. This marked type of Docetism, far from being a difficulty, is an indication of early date, since the tendency of Docetism was ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... two attitudes in its dogma, uniting the Jewish doctrine of a divine Creator and Governor of this world with that of a divine Redeemer to lead us into another. Persons were not lacking to perceive the contradiction inherent in such an eclecticism; and it was the Gnostic or neo-Platonic party, which denied creation and taught a pure asceticism, that had the best of the argument. The West, however, would not yield to their logic. It might, in an hour of trouble and weakness, make concessions to quietism and accept the cross, but it would ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... knowledge, the definite article pointing to that which, above all else, was to be regarded as knowledge or wisdom. And when you find among the Neo-Platonists this word Gnosis used, it always means, and is defined to mean, "the knowledge of God," and the "Gnostic" is "a man who knows God." So, again, among the early Christians. Take such a man as Origen. He uses the same word in exactly the same sense; for when Origen is declaring that the Church has medicine for the sinner, and that Christ is the Good Physician who heals the diseases ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... the attention of that eminent scholar H. T. Colebrooke, and of which, by the kind assistance of a friend, I am enabled to offer a metrical translation. In judging it we should bear in mind that it was not written by a gnostic or by a pantheistic philosopher, but by a poet who felt all these doubts and problems as his own, without any wish to convince or to startle, only uttering what had been weighing on his mind, just as later poets would sing the doubts and sorrows ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... tractarian^, Puseyite, ritualist; Puritan. Catholic, Roman, Catholic, Romanist, papist. Jew, Hebrew, Rabbinist, Rabbist^, Sadducee; Babist^, Motazilite; Mohammedan, Mussulman, Moslem, Shiah, Sunni, Wahabi, Osmanli. Brahmin^, Brahman^; Parsee, Sufi, Buddhist; Magi, Gymnosophist^, fire worshiper, Sabian, Gnostic, Rosicrucian &c Adj. heterodox, heretical; unorthodox, unscriptural, uncanonical; antiscriptural^, apocryphal; unchristian, antichristian^; schismatic, recusant, iconoclastic; sectarian; dissenting, dissident; secular &c, (lay) 997. pagan; heathen, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... substitute circumcision and the Mosaic law for faith in Christ, as the ground of justification. They seem rather to have been Christian Jews of an ascetic turn of mind, and imbued with the semi-oriental philosophy of that day, which contained in itself the seeds of the later Gnostic systems. Having no clear apprehension of the glory of Christ's person and the fulness of the salvation which his gospel offers to men, they sought to supplement the Christian system by their ascetic practices and ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... been affirmed, the product of anterior civilizations—a mere compound of Greek and Oriental elements—it is not the less certain that it brings to the human mind the satisfaction vainly sought by it in the East as in the West. Omnia subito is not its device, but that of the Gnostic heresy. Better to say, with Clement of Alexandria and Origen, that the night of paganism had its stars to light it, but that they called to the Morning-star which ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Byzantine Christianity issuing from the Russian lower classes. In the thick and muddy waters of Muscovite sectarianism we can distinguish foreign admixtures, sometimes Protestant, sometimes Jewish, or even Mohammedan, more frequently Gnostic or pagan. The Raskol, nevertheless, remains wholly different, in principle and in tendency, from all the religions and religious movements of the world: it is original and national from the foundation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... after leaving the trap in which his tail remained, he presented himself to his normally elongated companions. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at our Society, to show that I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes. To my great ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... method could be devised to assist the masses?' But for those who are wise he has always the higher teachings, which are given only to those who have proved themselves worthy of it. This teaching is not lost; the church cast it out when she expelled the great Gnostic Doctors, but it has nevertheless been preserved, and it is precisely that Wisdom which we are studying—precisely that which we find to answer all the problems of life, to give us a rational rule by which to live, to be to us a veritable gospel of good news ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... to the Gnostic heresies are explained when that critic at the end of his argument objects to the Epistle that it makes use of a number of writings 'the origin of which must be placed in the second century, such as the Acts, 1 Peter, the Epistles to the Philippians and to the ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... practice, alone accords with the known facts relating to the reception of the Fourth Gospel in the second century. Its theology is stamped on the teaching of orthodox apologists; its authority is quoted for the speculative tenets of the manifold Gnostic sects, Basilideans, Valentinians, Ophites; its narrative is employed even by a Judaising writer like the author of the Clementines. The phenomena which confront us in the last quarter of the second century are inexplicable, except on the supposition that the Gospel had had a long previous ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... may be so. But, sir, that of which my ex-associates are ignorant, and which doubtless will astonish you, is that I have been many other things,—in religion, by turns a Protestant, a Papist, an Arian and Semi-Arian, a Manichean, a Gnostic, an Adamite even and a Pre-Adamite, a Sceptic, a Pelagian, a Socinian, an Anti-Trinitarian, and a Neo-Christian; [72] in philosophy and politics, an Idealist, a Pantheist, a Platonist, a Cartesian, an Eclectic (that is, a sort of juste-milieu), ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Creed is a positive statement of the essential facts of Christianity. The Second Article, says Zahn, is "a compend of the Evangelical history, including even external details." (264.) Yet some of the clauses of this Creed were probably inserted in opposition to prevailing, notably Gnostic, heresies of the first centuries. It was the first Christian symbol and, as Tertullian and others declare, the bond of unity and fellowship of the early Christian congregations everywhere. It must not, however, be regarded as inspired, much less as superior even ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente |
