as the paths of error are yarious and infinite, the Gnostics were imperceptibly divided into more than fifty particular sects33, of whom the most celebrated appear to have been the Basilidians, the Valentinians, the Marcionites, and, in a still later period, the Manichaeans. Each of these sects could boast of its bishops and congregations, of its doctors and martyrsffi and, instead

of the four gospels adopted by the church, the

Marcionites were very numerous in Italy, Syria, Egypt, Arabia, and Persia.

C P- apprehending that either the mockery, or the

.___v_si_.. compliance, would expose him t-o the resentment of any invisible, or, as he conceived them, imaginary powers. But the established religious of Paganism were seen by the p'rimitive Christians in a much more odious and formidable light. It was the universal sentiment both of the church and of heretics, that the daemons were the authors, the patrons, and the objects of idolatry 33. Those rebellious spirits who had been degraded from the rank of angels, and cast down into the infernal pit, were still permitted to roam upon earth, to torment the bodies, and to seduce the minds, of sinful men. The daemons soon discovered and abused the natural propenfity of the human heart towards devotion, and, artsully withdrawingv the. adoration of- mankind from their Creator, they usurped the place and' honours of the Supreme Deity. By the success of their malicious contrivances, they at once gratified their own vanity and revenge, and obtained the only comfort of which they were yet susceptible, the hope of involving the human species in the participation. of their guilt and misery. It was consessed, or at least it was imagined, that. they had distributed among themselves the most. important characters of p'olytheism, one daemon assuming the name and attributes of Jupiter, another* of jEsculapius, a third of Venus, and a fourth perhaps of Apollo 39; and that, by the