The Apellites denied the doctrine of the supreme divinity of Jesus Christ. In their belief there was but one God, who sent to the world his Son, who took a body not in the womb of the virgin Mary, but from the four elements. Their sect widely spread in the East during the second century. Bergier says, writing about the doctrines of the Ophites, a Christian sect of the second century: "In their belief, matter was eternal; the world was created against the will of God, and was governed by a multitude of spirits who govern the world. Christ united to the man Jesus to destroy the empire of the Demiourge, or creator of the world." Therefore the Ophites did not believe the doctrine of the supreme divinity of Jesus Christ. One of the doctrines of the Cainites was, that Jesus Christ was a spirit sent by God to save the world. The Hermogenians, or followers of Hermogene, a Stoician philosopher, converted to Christianism at the end of the second century, believed that matter was eternal; that there was but one God, who had sent a spirit, Jesus Christ, to correct the evil that was among men. "The Hermians, or disciples of Hermias," Bergier says, "taught that matter is eternal; that God is the soul of the world; that Jesus Christ, ascending to the heavens left his body in the Sun, from whom he had taken it; that the soul of man is composed of fire and of subtle air; that the birth of children is the resurrection, and that the world is hell." Bergier adds, in another article, that they believed that there was but one God, who had sent to the world a spirit, Jesus Christ. Therefore the Hermians did not believe the doctrine of the supreme divinity of Jesus Christ. Bergier, writing about the Sethians, says: "They said that the soul of Seth had passed to the body of Jesus Christ, and that Seth and Jesus Christ were the same person." St. Augustine informs us that the Severians did not believe the doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh, and rejected the Old Testament. They did not believe that Jesus Christ was God himself. The Encratites never held that Jesus Christ was God. Bergier says, "They did not believe that the Son of God was truly born from the virgin Mary." The Valesians rejected the doctrine that Jesus Christ was God himself.