after a brief description of his system, in which no Scriptural allusion occurs, he goes on to compare the views of the rest, and in chap. xii. he returns to Ptolemæus and his followers [------].
In the preface to Book ii, he again says that he has been exposing the falsity of the followers of Valentinus (qui sunt a Valentino) and will proceed to establish what he has advanced; and everywhere he uses the plural "they," with occasional direct references to the followers of Valentinus (qui sunt a Valentino).(1) The same course is adopted in Book iii., the plural being systematically used, and the same distinct definition introduced at intervals.(2) And again, in the preface to Book iv. he recapitulates that the preceding books had been written against these, "qui sunt a Valentino" (§ 2). In fact, it would almost be impossible for any writer more frequently and emphatically to show that he is not, as he began by declaring, dealing with the founder of the school himself, but with his followers living and teaching at the time at which he wrote.
Canon Westcott, with whose system of positively enunciating unsupported and controverted statements we are already acquainted, is only slightly outstripped by the German apologist in his misrepresentation of the evidence of Valentinus. It must be stated, however, that, acknowledging, as no doubt he does, that Irenæus never refers to Valentinus himself, Canon Westcott passes over in complete silence the supposed references upon
which Teschendorf relies as his only evidence for the use of the Synoptics by that Gnostic. He, however, makes the following extraordinary statement regarding Valentinus:
"The fragments of his writings which remain show the same natural and trustful use of Scripture as other Christian works of the same period; and there is no diversity of character in this respect between the quotations given in Hippolytus and those found in Clement of Alexandria. He cites the Epistle to the Ephesians as 'Scripture,' and refers clearly to the Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Luke, and St. John, to the Epistles to the Romans,"(1) &c.
We shall now give the passages which he points out in support of these assertions.(2) The first two are said to occur in the Stromata of the Alexandrian Clement, who professes to quote the very words of a letter of Valentinus to certain people regarding the passions, which are called by the followers of Basilides "the appendages of the soul." The passage is as follows: "But one only is good, whose presence is the manifestation through the Son, and