The popularity and success that attended Valentinus’ own teaching may be judged from the pains that the Fathers took to oppose it. The five books _Against Heresies_ so often quoted above were written by Irenaeus with the avowed intention of refuting Valentinus’ disciples. Hippolytus, who aimed at a more encyclopaedic account of the heresies of his time, devotes more space to the Valentinian sect than to any other. Tertullian not only repeatedly gibes at them after his manner when treating of other matters, but composed a special book against them still extant, from which we learn of the existence of other treatises against them written by Justin Martyr, Miltiades a Christian sophist, and one Proculus, all which are now lost[328]. Those near to Valentinus in date seem hardly to have considered him an enemy of Christianity. Clement of Alexandria quotes several passages from the writings of him and his followers, and although it is always with the view of contradicting the statements of his fellow-countryman, he yet does so without any of the heat displayed by other controversialists[329]. On the other hand, the orthodox who wrote long after Valentinus was in his grave are most bitter against him. Epiphanius, who seldom had a good word for any one, calls him, with some justice, the chief of heretics[330]; Philaster of Brescia says he was more a follower of Pythagoras than of Christ, and that he led captive the souls of many[331]; Praedestinatus, that he and his followers throughout the East severely wounded the Church of God[332]; while Eusebius in his _Life of Constantine_ produces an Imperial edict against the Valentinians and other heretics, issued, according to him, some time before the baptism of its promulgator, and ordering that they shall no longer be allowed to assemble together and that their “houses of prayer” shall be confiscated to the use of the Catholic Church[333]. It was probably in pursuance of some such law, which also enjoined, as Eusebius tells us, the search for and destruction of their writings, that a conventicle of the Valentinians at Callinicum on the Eastern frontier of the Empire was burned by the Christian mob headed by their bishop and monks in A.D. 388[334]. The same scenes were no doubt enacted in other parts of the Empire; and we may, perhaps, see in the fury of the persecutors the measure of their fear.