The case was different with Apelles, who was certainly later in date than Marcion and perhaps succeeded him in the headship of the sect, either immediately or at one remove[753]. According to Tertullian, Apelles left Rome for Alexandria where he no doubt came in contact with the Gnostic opinions there rife[754]. The slander that Tertullian sets on foot about him to the effect that he forsook his master’s continence and was addicted to the company of women is unexpectedly refuted by Tertullian’s contemporary, Rhodo[755]. But Apelles must have come in contact in Alexandria with the followers of Valentinus and other Gnostic teachers, and their arguments no doubt compelled him to modify the strict dualism of his master. According to Rhodo, Apelles asserted that there was only one principle of all things, which would imply that the Demiurge was the creature of the Supreme God, and that Matter, instead of being essentially evil and independent, must have been also created by Him. Hippolytus, who was possibly a little later than Rhodo, amplifies this by the statement that Apelles held the Demiurge to be the fashioner of things coming into being (subsequent to him)[756], and that there was a third god or angel of a fiery nature who inspired Moses, and even a fourth who was the cause of evil. In this the Gnostic idea of correspondence or reflection of one world in another is manifest; but it is evident that it also approaches more nearly than does the uncompromising dualism of Marcion himself to the teaching of the Catholic Church. The same tendency to compromise is evident in Apelles’ willingness to use the books of both the Old and the New Testament, quoting with regard to them, if Epiphanius is to be believed, the apocryphal saying of Jesus “Be ye wise money-changers!” to be found in, among other works, the _Pistis Sophia_[757]. Apelles seems also to have modified his master’s teaching with regard to the body of Jesus, which was, he said, no phantasm, but a real body of flesh and blood assumed by Him on His descent to the earth, and returned by Him piece by piece on His Ascension to the different elements whence it was drawn. His indebtedness in this to the sources from which the author of the _Pistis Sophia_ drew the same doctrine needs no demonstration. Yet there is no reason to assert that Apelles considered these “corrections” of Marcion’s teaching in any way essential or binding on his followers. He seems, too, to have adopted one of the practices of the primitive Church in paying attention to the ecstatical visions of “prophets” of both sexes, his faith in the prophecies of a virgin named Philumene being the foundation of Tertullian’s slander on his morals. There can be no doubt, however, that in spite of these tendencies, he remained in essentials a true follower of Marcion, and that like his master, he deprecated enquiry into insoluble problems. “One ought not,” he said, as Rhodo