"It is no accident that, whereas the libertinistic version of gnostic morality was represented by decidedly esoteric types, our examples for the ascetic version are taken from... exoteric types of Gnosticism. Both Marcion and Mani intended to found a general church... and ... was a community religion of popular complexion. Anarchy is incompatible with institution... and any religious establishment will lead in the direction of discipline. To some extent the church takes over the function of the ; ideally it aspires to being an all-embracing ' itself, in this world though not of this world, replacing the secular civitas in regulating the lives of its members. This must necessarily give rise to a canon of "virtues"... In short, institutionalized salvation, that is, the very idea of the "church," favors the discipline of ascetic morality over a literal understanding of the ideal of pneumatic freedom, which the anticosmic position... suggests. ...The Christian Gnostics listed by Irenaeus as holding libertine views regarded their "freedom" as an executive privilege never meant for the ordinary members... Generally... except for a brief period of revolutionary extremism, the practical consequences from gnostic views were more often in the direction of asceticism than of libertinism."