Bardesanists

Followers of Bardesanes, of Edessa, founder of a Gnostic sect in the second century. They believed that the human body was ethereal till it became imbruted with sin. Milton, in his Comus, refers to this:—

“When Lust

By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,

Lets in defilement to the inward parts,

The soul grows clotted by contagion,

Imbodies and imbrutes.”

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.