Cainites

They identified the Creator with the God of the Jews, viewing him and those he favored with hostility and believing that the purpose of redemption was the dissolution of his work.

They claimed kinship with those to whom he showed antagonism in the Old Testament but believed he was the weaker power and could do them no permanent harm, since they enjoyed the protection of Sophia.

The view that Judas through his more perfect Gnosis penetrated the wish of Jesus more successfully than the others, and accomplished it by bringing him to the Cross through which he effected redemption, is only one of them.

Philaster, on the other hand, assigns the action of Judas to his knowledge that Christ intended to destroy the truth—a purpose which he frustrated by the betrayal.

So far as the moral character and conduct of the Cainites is concerned, there is no doubt that Irenaeus intended to represent them as shrinking from no vileness, but rather as deliberately practising it.

Arthur S. Peake sees no ground to suppose that the Cainites held such a view, but they seem, in his opinion, to have professed the belief that this fullness of experience was essential to salvation.

We have no substantial justification for asserting or doubting the truth of Irenaeus' account, though accusations of immorality urged against heretics should always be received with caution.

Arthur S. Peake, on the other hand, believes that there is no valid reason to deny the generally accepted view that the Gnostic attitude to matter did lead to quite opposite results.

According to him, some Gnostics would infer from that attitude a duty to crush the flesh beneath the spirit by the severest austerity, but the premise might lead to a libertine as well as to an ascetic conclusion.