Here and there a reaction took place against the absurdity of this sacramental superstition. Thus Irenaeus (i. 21, 4) tells us of certain Gnostics who would admit no external holy practices as efficacious. A pure piety breathes in the words of the Gnostics preserved in excerpta ex Theodoto, 78, 2: "But not baptism alone sets us free, but knowledge (gnosis) : who we were, what we have become, where we were, whither we have sunk, whither we hasten, whence we are redeemed, what is birth and what rebirth." We have seen that Valentinian Gnosticism affected the nearest approach of all the Gnostic sects to the Catholic Church. Valen tinus's own life indicates that he for a long time sought to remain within the official Church, and had at first no idea of founding a community of his own.
And yet this reconciliation of Gnosticism was a fruitless and henceforward a purposeless undertaking. Oriental dualism and wildly intemperate Oriental mythology had grown into so radical and essential a part of Gnosticism that they could not be separated from it to make way for a purer and more spiritual view of religion. And at a time when the prevailing tendency of Chris
tianity was a struggle out of the darkness of Oriental mythology and eschatology into clearness, and an effort towards union with the lucid simplicity of the Hellenic spirit, these Gnostics, for all their efforts, and even the most noble of them, had come too late. They are not the men of a forward movement, but they are, and remain, in spite of all clearer insight, the rear-guard of piety.
See Bibliography to article GNOSTICISM. Also E. F. Scott, art. "Valentinianism" in Hastings Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. vol. xii.; R. A. Lipsius, art. "Valentinus" in Smith's Dictionary of Christian Biography ; Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyklopddie des klassischen Altertums, s.v. Gnosticismus, Gnostiker; G. Heinrici, D=e Valentin;an ische Gnosis und die heiligen Schriften (1871) and A. Harnack, "Brief des Ptolomaeus und die Flora," Sitzungsber. der Berl. Akademie (1909) .