“There never was a great religious reform that was not pure at the beginning. The first followers of Buddha, as well as the disciples of Jesus, were all men of the highest morality. The aversion felt by the reformers of all ages to vice under any shape, is proved in the cases of Sakya-muni, Pythagoras, Plato, Jesus, St. Paul, Ammonius Sakkas. The great Gnostic leaders – if less successful – were not less virtuous in practice nor less morally pure. Marcion, Basilides, Valentinus, were renowned for their ascetic lives. The Nicolaitans, who, if they did not belong to the great body of the Ophites, were numbered among the small sects which were absorbed in it at the beginning of the second century, owe their origin, as we have shown, to Nicolas of Antioch, “a man of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom.” How absurd the idea that such men would have instituted “libidinous rites”; as well as accuse Jesus of having promoted the similar rites which we find practiced so extensively by the mediaeval orthodox Christians behind the secure shelter of monastic walls.
If, however, we are asked to credit such an accusation against the Gnostics, an accusation transferred with tenfold acrimony, centuries later, to the unfortunate heads of the Templars, why should we not believe the same of the orthodox Christians? Minucius Felix states that “the first Christians were accused by the world of inducing, during the ceremony of the “Perfect Passover”, each neophyte, on his admission, to plunge a knife into an infant concealed under a heap of flour; the body then serving for a banquet to the whole congregation. After they had become the dominate party, they (the Christians), transferred this charge to their own dissenters.”
The real crime of heterodoxy is plainly stated by John in his Epistles and Gospel. “He that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh…is a deceiver and an antichrist”, 2 Epistle 7). In his previous Epistle, he teaches his flock that there are two trinities (7, 8) – in short, the Nazarene system.
The inference to be drawn from all this is, that the made-up and dogmatic Christianity of the Constantinian period is simply an offspring of the numerous conflicting sects, half-castes themselves, born of Pagan parents. Each of these can claim representatives converted to the so-called orthodox body of Christians. And, as every newly born dogma had to be carried out by the majority of votes, every sect colored the main substance with its own hue, till the moment when the emperor enforced this revealed olla-podrida, of which he evidently did not himself understand a word, upon an unwilling world as the religion of Christ.
Wearied in the vain attempt to sound this fathomless bog of international speculations, unable to appreciate a religion based on the pure spirituality of an ideal conception, Christendom gave itself up to the adoration of brutal force as represented by a Church backed up by Constantine. Since then, among the thousand rites, dogmas, and ceremonies copied from Paganism, the Church can claim but one invention as thoroughly original with her – namely, the doctrine of eternal damnation, and one custom, that of the anathema. The Pagans rejected both with horror. “An execration is a fearful and grievous thing”, says Plutarch. “Wherefore, the priestess of Athens was commended for refusing to curse Alkibiades (for desecration of the Mysteries), when the people required her to do it; for, she said, that she was a priestess of prayers, and not of curses.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 