From this lack of trustworthy evidence, the discovery in 1842 at a convent on Mt Athos of eight out of the ten books of the _Philosophumena_ now generally attributed to Hippolytus, Bishop of “Portus Romana” in 230 A.D.[38], seemed likely to deliver us. The work thus recovered bore the title of the _Refutation of all Heresies_, and did succeed in giving us a fairly clear and coherent account of some twenty Gnostic sects, the very existence of many of which was previously unknown to us. Moreover, it went a good way beyond its predecessors in pointing out that the real origin of all the heretical sects then existing was to be found, not so much in the diabolic inspiration which other writers thought sufficient to account for it, as in the Pythagorean, Platonic, and other philosophies then in vogue, together with the practice of astrology and magic rites which had come to form an important part of all the Pagan religions then popular. It also showed a very extensive and apparently first-hand acquaintance with the works of the Gnostic leaders, and the lengthy quotations which it gives from their writings enable us to form a better idea than we had before been able to do both of what the Gnostic tenets really were and of the arguments by which they were propagated. Unfortunately the text of the _Philosophumena_ has not been able to withstand the assaults of those textual critics who have already reduced the Book of Genesis to a patchwork of several authors writing at widely separate times and places, and writers like Dr. Salmon and Prof. Stähelin have laboured to show that the author of the _Philosophumena_ was taken in by a forger who had himself concocted all the documents which Hippolytus quotes as being the work of different heresiarchs[39]. Their conclusions, although they do not seem to put the matter entirely beyond doubt, have been accepted by many theological writers, especially in Germany, and in the course of the discussion the fact has emerged that the documents quoted can hardly go back to an earlier date than the year 200 A.D.[40] It is therefore unlikely that Hippolytus had before him the actual words of the heresiarchs whom he is endeavouring to refute; and if the _Philosophumena_ were all we had to depend upon, we might despair of knowing what “the great Gnostics of Hadrian’s time” really taught.