@Robert_Edwardly@poa.st This one isn't about presbyterianism, but sure. In church history, the gnostics were the first to posit a calvinistic view of election, they were the first to deny free will in humans, and they were the first to deny that the Crucifixion was the effective cause of salvation. They were the first to claim that the passions are something alien to God, defining impassibility as effectively having no emotions whatsoever. They were the first to deny access to salvation by claiming that the Atonement was only for the elect (although they were primarily docetist in their view of what happened in the Crucifixion, still it only benefits those preselected), and they were the first to claim that regeneration precedes faith. All of these are from Sethian and Valentinian documents as I've been covering in the series. Though the reformed are not gnostic in their identities, they are in their influences and outlook - because gnosticism isn't a set of doctrines but a *mood,* a fundamental presupposition that human reason can make doctrine. Since calvinism relies heavily on human reason to "fill the gaps" as it were, they come to much of the same conclusions as the gnostics. Unlike the gnostics, they can still be saved via felicitous inconsistency.