Freke and Gandy suggest that, at some point, groups of Christians who had only experienced the "Outer" Mysteries were split off from the elders of the religion and forgot that there had ever "been" a second initiation, and that, later, when they encountered groups who had retained the Inner Mysteries, these "Literalist Christians" Freke and Gandy call them attacked the "Gnostics" for claiming that what the Literalists considered false knowledge and false initiations, was, in fact, the original second initiation of primal (Gnostic) Christianity. Freke and Gandy claim that the Literalists won out when the emperor Constantine saw the political merit of 'one empire, one emperor, one god', practically exterminated the Gnostics, and saw to it that 'Literalist Christianity' became the officially-approved Roman Catholic Church and its modern descendants.