The question of how different gnostic Christians interpreted and practiced sacraments — so long limited to the sparse references in the anti-gnostic writers — is being reexamined in the light of recently available gnostic documents. Yet one source long available — the fragments of Heracleon that Origen cites in his own Commentary on John — yields evidence that Heracleon not only interprets the sacraments in terms of Valentinian theology, but also criticized, from this theological standpoint, the sacramental theology and practice of the “great church.” Heracleon's sacramental theology, however, has escaped the notice of those researchers that have limited their investigation to the quoted fragments themselves. Analysis of Origen's commentary as a whole reveals that other statements of Heracleon's doctrine frequently appear apart from the direct quotations. Such statements, recognizable by their concurrence of terminology and doctrine with the quoted fragments, Origen introduces as the opinion of “the heterodox,” 3 or “those who introduce the doctrine of natures,” or in the voice of the imaginary interlocutor. As Heracleon is his principal protagonist, these often set forth his views. Extending our methodology to include investigation of Origen's arguments — which are characteristically structured, in the John commentary, to refute Heracleon's allegations — we discover in the extant debate evidence for a Valentinian theology of baptism and the eucharist.

The Libri Carolini, the official Frankish protest against the worship of images decreed by the Seventh Ecumenical Council of II Nicaea in 787, accuses the synodal assembly of having falsified a statement by Ambrose of Milan in such a manner that it favored their own error of image-worship, “ut illorum errori faveret.” On the surface, the author of the Libri Carolini (LC) offers in II, 15 a nearly perfect specimen of textual criticism by comparing the original Ambrose text with the allegedly falsified version to be found in the First Latin translation of the Greek acta of II Nicaea. He cites the genuine Ambrose passage in LC II,15 (p. 75.2–4):

A.

a. “Numquid, cum et divinitatem eius adoramus et carnem, Christum dividimus?

b. Numquid, cum in eo imaginem Dei crucemque veneramur, dividimus eum ?”

Very little is known for certain about John Pupper of Goch. He appears to have been a priest of the archdiocese of Utrecht, who founded a convent in Malines in 1459 and who had previously been a rector in Sluis. He may have studied in Cologne, though that is subject to some doubt, or even in Paris, though that remains to be proven. His importance for history lies not in his founding of the Augustinian convent of Thabor but in his composition of four theological treatises, which attacked scholastic theology and monastic theory in the name of the doctrine of Christian liberty.

In 1630 Thomas Hooker left England to avoid further prosecution by Archbishop Laud. Before him lay an uncertain future, first in Holland, and then, after 1633, in America; behind him, years of increasing recognition as one of the most effective Puritan preachers, especially while he was a lecturer at Chelmsford in Essex. Yet by 1630 only two of Hooker's works had been published: The Poore Doubting Christian Drawne Unto Christ, and the “Epistle to the Reader” in John Rogers' The Doctrine of Faith. Both appeared in 1629.

That King James I of England was ardently interested in religious ideas is well-known to students of the seventeenth century. Less well-known is the fact that he was specifically interested in the cause of religious reunion and played a leading part in a movement to find a way to reconcile the different national churches of his day and thus significantly to reduce international tensions. His plans did not exclude the possibility of a rapprochement between the Churches of the Reformation and Rome — even though James's own religious and political writings involved him in a series of bitter exchanges with leading Roman Catholic controversialists. From the beginning of his reign in England James had wanted to approach the problem of religious disunity through an international assembly of divines — or an ecumenical council, and he took care to make his intentions clear through diplomatic channels. During the years 1610–1614 he made use of the celebrated classical scholar Isaac Casaubon, then resident in England, in stimulating support for his ideas, especially in learned circles on the continent. Casaubon's death in England in the summer of 1614 deprived James of a zealous ally in the cause of Christian reunion, but it did not bring the campaign to which they had committed themselves to an end. By this time James was involved in the most ambitious reunion plan of his career, the result of his collaboration with Pierre Du Moulin, pastor of the Reformed Church in Paris and one of the leading theologians in France

George Tyrrell's identification of the Pope as the Antichrist was not particularly original but it was important. For Tyrrell was the leader of a movement which, in the opinion of René Marlé, created the most serious disturbance in the Catholic Church since the time of the Reformation. Moreover, the reformers and iconoclasts who had made this charge previously had usually done so from a position outside of Catholic tradition. Tyrrell, however, attacked the Pope from within, as a member of his flock. The Jesuit philosopher even went so far as to claim that his radical posture was the inevitable consequence of his Catholic convictions. Thus he explained:

I believe in the Roman Church so far as it is Christian and Catholic; I disbelieve in it so far as it is papal. I see two spirits in it, as in myself, struggling for supremacy — Light and Darkness, Christ and Anti-Christ; God and the Devil. At present Christ is thrown and Anti-Christ is uppermost. … I look for the day when Peter, after his boasted fidelity and manifold denials, aliquando conversus, confirmabit fratres. It is a long way off from that blessed cockcrow.

Complicating the exegesis of this difficult passage are certain textual problems with which this present submission is to be concerned. With the Masoretic Text of v. 24 — wayehî badderek bammālôn wayyipgešēhû YHWH wayebaqqēš hamîtô — the Versions are in substantial agreement. The Syriac text twice inserts ‘Moses’ into this verse, as the subject of the sentence and as the object of mût, but this is an obvious intrusion designed to clarify a difficult context, while the Targum (expectedly) and the Old Greek prefix an equivalent for Heb. mal'āk before YHWH. It is probable that the double mention of a setting (i.e. badderek/bammālôn) is the preservation of two ancient variants. J. Morgenstern, who with others, has rightly noted this, draws attention to the peculiarity of the article with mlwn (i.e. bammālon), since the contextual situation is generally vague and in a journey of many days there may have been several such stops, though on the other hand the article with derek occasions no difficulty since the journey as a whole is referred to. Morgenstern preferred to read bammālôn as a nominal form from the root mûl, translating ‘now upon the journey, at the circumcision Yahweh attacked him (i.e., the child) and sought to kill him.’