. The history of the devil and the idea of evil; from the earliest times to the present day . hey re-garded Yahveh, the demiurge or author of this visibleand material world, as an evil deity while the serpent * Philo explains the name therapeutae also as worshippers. The genuine-ness of Philos book i9c ii/a co7item(<latiia and with it the very existence of thetherapeutae has been doubted by P. E. Lucius, whose views, however, are thor-oughly refuted by Fred. C. Conybeare, Philo About the Contemflative Life (Cla-rendon Press, Oxford, 1S95) THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA. 139 with liis promise of givi
. The history of the devil and the idea of evil; from the earliest times to the present day . hey re-garded Yahveh, the demiurge or author of this visibleand material world, as an evil deity while the serpent * Philo explains the name therapeutae also as worshippers. The genuine-ness of Philos book i9c ii/a co7item(<latiia and with it the very existence of thetherapeutae has been doubted by P. E. Lucius, whose views, however, are thor-oughly refuted by Fred. C. Conybeare, Philo About the Contemflative Life (Cla-rendon Press, Oxford, 1S95) THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA. 139 with liis promise of giving knowledge or gnosis to man,appeared to them as a messenger of the true and goodGod. This God of goodness, they declared, was unlikeYahvehfree of passions and full of love and mercy. Hewas, as Irenseus informs us, triune, being at once theFather, the Son, and the Spirit. The Father is the pro-totype of man, an idea which is carried out in the Cab-ala as the Adam Kadmon; the Son is the eternal reasonor comprehension {Eyvour), and the Spirit is the femaleprinciple of spiritual The Christian Trinity, God Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.(Old German School. Reproduced from Muther.) Similar ideas concerning the triune Godhead and thesalvation from evil are reported of other sects and espe-cially of Simon Magus who is mentioned in the Acts ashaving been baptised by St. Peter and condemned for hisopinion that the Holy Ghost could be bought with money. We know of sects in Judasa,the Nazarenes, the Sa-bians.* or Baptisers, the Essenes, and the Ebionites,which were born of the same seeking spirit of the we must bear in mind that the members of these so- *St. John the Baptist was a Sabian. The name is derived from »?? {/sa/>/ia)to baptise. 140 THE HISTORY OF THE DEVIL. cieties belonged exclusively to the poorer class of societyand formed a third party which was quite distinct fromthe orthodox Pharisees and the liberal Sadducees.^ The^-are to us of importance, however
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