So in the Carpocratians of the second century we find already the tendency towards that _deification of humanity_ which forms the supreme doctrine of the secret societies and of the visionary Socialists of our day. The war now begins between the two contending principles: the Christian conception of man reaching up to God and the secret society conception of man as God, needing no revelation from on high and no guidance but the law of his own nature. And since that nature is in itself divine, all that springs from it is praiseworthy, and those acts usually regarded as sins are not to be condemned. By this line of reasoning the Carpocratians arrived at much the same conclusions as modern Communists with regard to the ideal social system. Thus Epiphanus held that since Nature herself reveals the principle of the community and the unity of all things, human laws which are contrary to this law of Nature are so many culpable infractions of the legitimate order of things. Before these laws were imposed on humanity everything was in common--land, goods, and women. According to certain contemporaries, the Carpocratians returned to this primitive system by instituting the community of women and indulging in every kind of licence. The further Gnostic sect of Antitacts, following this same cult of human nature, taught revolt against all positive religion and laws and the necessity for gratifying the flesh; the Adamites of North Africa, going a step further in the return to Nature, cast off all clothing at their religious services so as to represent the primitive innocence of the garden of Eden--a precedent followed by the Adamites of Germany in the fifteenth century.[117] These Gnostics, says Eliphas Lévi, under the pretext of "spiritualizing matter, materialized the spirit in the most revolting ways.... Rebels to the hierarchic order, ... they wished to substitute the mystical licence of sensual passions to wise Christian sobriety and obedience to laws.... Enemies of the family, they wished to produce sterility by increasing debauchery."[118] By way of systematically perverting the doctrines of the Christian faith the Gnostics claimed to possess the true versions of the Gospels, and professed belief in these to the exclusion of all the others.[119] Thus the Ebionites had their own corrupted version of the Gospel of St. Matthew founded on the "Gospel of the Hebrews," known earlier to the Jewish Christians; the Marcosians had their version of St. Luke, the Cainites their own "Gospel of Judas," and the Valentinians their "Gospel of St. John." As we shall see later, the Gospel of St. John is the one that throughout the war on Christianity has been specially chosen for the purpose of perversion.