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:—
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Imbodies and imbrutes.”