And now, in order to make such passages as the above more intelligible, we will endeavor to define, as briefly as possible, the dogmas in which, with very trifling differences, nearly all the Gnostic sects believed. It is in Ephesus that flourished in those days the greatest college, wherein the abstruse Oriental speculations and the Platonic philosophy were taught in conjunction. It was a focus of the universal “secret” doctrines; the weird laboratory whence, fashioned in elegant Grecian phraseology, sprang the quintessence of Buddhistic, Zoroastrian, and Chaldean philosophy. Artemis, the gigantic concrete symbol of theosophico-pantheistic abstractions, the great mother Multimamma, androgyne and patroness of the “Ephesian writings,” was conquered by Paul; but although the zealous converts of the apostles pretended to burn all their books on “curious arts,” τα περιεργα, enough of these remained for them to study when their first zeal had cooled off. It is from Ephesus that spread nearly all the _Gnosis_ which antagonized so fiercely with the Irenæan dogmas; and still it was Ephesus, with her numerous collateral branches of the great college of the Essenes, which proved to be the hot-bed of all the kabalistic speculations brought by the Tanaïm from the captivity. “In Ephesus,” says Matter, “the notions of the Jewish-Egyptian school, and the semi-Persian speculations of the kabalists had then recently come to swell the vast conflux of Grecian and Asiatic doctrines, so there is no wonder that teachers should have sprung up there who strove to combine the religion newly preached by the apostle with the ideas there so long established.” Had not the Christians burdened themselves with the _Revelations_ of a little nation, and accepted the Jehovah of Moses, the Gnostic ideas would never have been termed _heresies_; once relieved of their dogmatic exaggerations the world would have had a religious system based on pure Platonic philosophy, and surely something would then have been gained. Now let us see what are the greatest _heresies_ of the Gnostics. We will select Basilides as the standard for our comparisons, for all the founders of other Gnostic sects group round him, like a cluster of stars borrowing light from their sun.