36. But while different enquiries were taking place among them[185] a certain man who was also called Theodotus, a money-changer by trade, undertook to say that a certain Melchizedek was the greatest power, and that he was greater than Christ. After the image of whom they allege that Christ happened [to come]. And they like the Theodotians before mentioned say that Jesus was a man, and in the same words [declare] that the Christ descended upon Him. [Sidenote: p. 392.] But the opinions[186] of Gnostics are varied, and we do not deem it worth while to recount in detail their foolish doctrines, composed of much absurdity and charged with blasphemy, the most respectable of which those Greeks who philosophized on the Divine have refuted. But one cause of the great conspiracy of these wicked ones was Nicolaus, one of the seven appointed to the diaconate by the Apostles.[187] He, having fallen away from the right doctrine, taught that it was indifferent how men lived and ate: whose disciples having waxed insolent, the Holy Spirit exposed in the Apocalypse as fornicators and eaters of things offered to idols.[188] 9. _Cerdo and Lucian._[189] 37. But a certain Cerdo taking in like manner his starting-point from these [heretics] and from Simon, says that the [Sidenote: p. 393.] God announced by Moses and [the] Prophets was not the Father of Jesus Christ. For that this God was known, but the Father of the Christ unknowable; and that the first-named was [only] just, but the other, good. The doctrine of this [Cerdo] Marcion confirmed when he took in hand the _Antitheses_[190] and everything which seemed to him to speak against the Demiurge of all things. And so did Lucian his disciple. 10. _Apelles._[191]