Eliphas Lévi, who, like Ragon, accepts the statements of the _Ordre du Temple_ concerning the "Johannite" origin of the Templars' secret doctrine, is, however, not deceived by these professions of Christianity, and boldly asserts that the Sovereign Pontiff Theoclet initiated Hugues de Payens "into the mysteries and hopes of his pretended Church, he lured him by the ideas of sacerdotal sovereignty and supreme royalty, he indicated him finally as his successor. So the Order of the Knights of the Temple was stained from its origin with schism and conspiracy against Kings."[194] Further, Lévi relates that the real story told to initiates concerning Christ was no other than the infamous _Toledot Yeshu_ described in the first chapter of this book, and which the Johannites dared to attribute to St. John.[195] This would accord with the confession of the Catalonian Knight Templar, Galcerandus de Teus, who stated that the form of absolution in the Order was: "I pray God that He may pardon your sins as He pardoned St. Mary Magdalene and the thief on the cross"; but the witness went on to explain: By the thief of which the head of the Chapter speaks, is meant, according to our statutes, that Jesus or Christ who was crucified by the Jews because he was not God, and yet he said he was God and the King of the Jews, which was an outrage to the true God who is in Heaven. When Jesus, a few moments before his death, had his side pierced by the lance of Longinus, he repented of having called himself God and King of the Jews and he asked pardon of the true God; then the true God pardoned him. It is thus that we apply to the crucified Christ these words: "as God pardoned the thief on the cross."[196] Raynouard, who quotes this deposition, stigmatizes it as "singular and extravagant"; M. Matter agrees that it is doubtless extravagant, but that "it merits attention. There was a whole system there, which was not the invention of Galcerant."[197] Eliphas Lévi provides the clue to that system and to the reason why Christ was described as a thief, by indicating the Cabalistic legend wherein He was described as having _stolen_ the sacred Name from the Holy of Holies. Elsewhere he explains that the Johannites "made themselves out to be the only people initiated into the true mysteries of the religion of the Saviour. They professed to know the real history of Jesus Christ, and by adopting part of Jewish traditions and the stories of the Talmud, they made out that the facts related in the Gospels"--that is to say, the Gospels accepted by the orthodox Church--"were only allegories of which St. John gives the key."[198]