Valentinianism, therefore, approved itself a stop-gap or temporary faith, which for two hundred years[457] acted as a halfway house between heathenism and Christianity. In this capacity, it was singularly efficient, and was one of the forces which enabled, as Renan said, the ancient world to change from Paganism to Christianity without knowing it. In particular, it seems to have attracted to itself the attention of the learned and leisured class who were endeavouring, earnestly if somewhat timidly, to work out a rule of faith and conduct from the welter of creeds and philosophies with which the Empire was swamped during the first Christian centuries. Such a class is not that out of which martyrs are made, and is sure sooner or later to acquiesce in the opinions of the majority; but we may be certain that the learned and polite Valentinians would have listened with natural disgust to the simple and enthusiastic declamations of Jewish fishermen and artizans which had for their chief theme the coming destruction and overthrow of the social system in which they had grown up. The brilliant, if baseless, speculations of Valentinus, which even now have a certain attraction for the lovers of mysticism[458], gave them exactly the kind of spiritual _pabulum_ they craved for, and enabled them to wait in hope and patience until Christianity, forcing its way upward, as religions generally do, from the lowest class of society, had become the faith of the governing ranks. In this way, Valentinianism was probably one of the best recruiting grounds for the Catholic Church, and Renan is doubtless right when he says that no one who passed from Paganism through the Gnosticism of Valentinus and his fellows ever reverted to his former faith. Yet Valentinianism itself was doomed to but a short life, and in its original form probably did not survive its founder by much more than a century and a half. One of its later developments we shall see in the next chapter. Footnote 282: The same may be said of practically all Christians of the Apostolic age. See Hatch, _H.L._ p. 124. It was the reproach which Celsus cast at the whole Christian community in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. See Origen, _cont. Cels._ Bk III. c. 44. Origen, _op. cit._ Bk III. c. 9, retorts that “now” (_i.e. circa_ 230 A.D.) not only rich but highly-placed men and well-born ladies are to be found among the Christians. The change probably took place during the reign of Commodus; Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._ Bk V. c. 21. Origen and Eusebius agree that this entry of educated men into the Church brought heresy along with it. See Origen, _op. cit._ Bk III. c. 12. Footnote 283: Bréhier, “La Cosmologie Stoicienne,” _R.H.R._ t. LXIV. (1911), pp. 1-9. Footnote 284: A. W. Benn, _The Philosophy of Greece_, 1898, pp. 246, 255. Footnote 285: