We have therefore, if we wish to find an author for that Document, to look for an Alexandrian teacher of Christianity who, although a heretic, did not take up the uncompromising opposition to the Catholic Church that Marcion and others did, and who taught before St. John’s Gospel was generally known. I have said elsewhere that there is no one who fulfils all those qualifications so well as Valentinus, the heresiarch who taught in the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, or from about A.D. 135 to 160.[88] Of Valentinus’ own teaching we know very little directly because the Fathers who denounced him as the heresiarch who had attracted the largest number of followers, have yet given us the doctrines of his successors rather than of himself. Thus, Irenæus, who wrote at least a generation after Valentinus, records the teaching of Valentinus’ immediate successor, Ptolemy; Hippolytus, half a century after Irenæus, the teaching probably of Axionicus,[89] while Tertullian and Epiphanius merely copy the statements of the two earlier heresiologists, and Origen quotes from the writings of Ptolemy’s contemporary Heracleon. Only Clement of Alexandria, Valentinus’ fellow countryman, who must have been born about the time when Valentinus was endeavouring to convert the Church of Rome to his views, quotes directly from Valentinus’ own words; and from these, it appears that Valentinus’ theology differed little in outward appearance from that of the Catholic Church of his time.[90] That this must have been so is indeed manifest when we read in Tertullian that Valentinus came to Rome expecting to be made bishop,[91] as one might now say, Pope, because of his genius and eloquence. Hippolytus, who probably drew his account from Axionicus, says that he declared the Supreme God to be “all Love” who created subsequent things that He might have something to love.[92] According to his opponents, Valentinus also taught that the Supreme God’s first and greatest creation was Nous or Mind, called also Monogenes or the Only One, or the Father, who was “like and equal to Himself,”[93] and from whom came Logos or the Word, from whom came Anthropos or Man. Yet none of these three last-named Powers produced offspring without female assistance, being, according to one account, themselves both male and female, or, according to another, having spouses called respectively Aletheia or Truth, Zoe or Life, and Ecclesia or the Church. It was even said that the Supreme God or Abyss, who was the source of all being, had in like manner a spouse named Sige “Silence,” or Charis “Grace,” although the Fathers admit that the followers of Valentinus, whose tenets they denounce, held various opinions as to this. They are, however, agreed that from these three syzygies or pairs, making with the Supreme God a Hebdomad or Ogdoad as the case may be, come forth at separate removes a Decad and a Dodecad or two groups of five and six syzygies respectively;