“So malicious do we find the holy Fathers in their unrelenting persecution of pretended “haeresies”, that we see them telling, without hesitation the most preposterous untruths, and inventing entire narratives, the better to impress their own otherwise unsupported arguments upon ignorance. If the mistake in relation to the tetrad had at first originated as a simple consequence of an unpremeditated blunder of Hippolytus, the explanations of Epiphanius and others who fell into the same absurd error have a less innocent look. When Hippolytus gravely denounces the great heresy of the Tetrad, Kol-Arbas, and states that the imaginary Gnostic leader is, “Kolarbasus, who endeavors to explain religion by measures and numbers”, we may simply smile. But when Epiphanius, with abundant indignation, elaborates upon the theme, “which is Heresy XV”, and pretending to be thoroughly acquainted with the subject, adds: “A certain Heracleon follows after Colarbasus, which is Heresy XVI”, then he lays himself open to the charge of deliberate falsification.
If the zealous Christian can boast so unblushingly of having caused “by his information seventy women, even of rank, to be sent into exile, through the seductions of some in whose number he had himself been drawn into joining their sect”, he has left us a fair standard by which to judge him. C. W. King remarks, very aptly on this point, that “it may reasonably be suspected that this worthy renegade had in this case saved himself from the fate of his fellow-religionists by turning evidence against them, on the opening of the persecution.”
And thus, one by one, perished the Gnostics, the only heirs to whose share had fallen a few stray crumbs of the unadulterated truth of primitive Christianity. All was confusion and turmoil during these first centuries, till the moment when all these contradictory dogmas were finally forced upon the Christian world, and examination was forbidden. For long ages it was made a sacrilege, punishable with severe penalties, often death, to seek to comprehend that which the Church had so conveniently elevated to the rank of divine mystery. But since biblical critics have taken upon themselves to “set the house in order”, the cases have become reversed.
Pagan creditors now come from every part of the globe to claim their own, and Christian theology begins to be suspected of complete bankruptcy. Such is the sad result of the fanaticism of the “orthodox” sects, who, to borrow an expression of the author of “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, never were, like the Gnostics, “the most polite, the most learned, and most wealthy of the Christian name.” And, if not all of them “smelt garlic”, as Renan will have it, on the other hand, none of these Christian saints have ever shrunk from spilling their neighbor’s blood, if the views of the latter did not agree with their own. And so, all our philosophers were swept away by the ignorant and superstitious masses.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 