@GrinNude ?????????? What???? This post is the most confusing thing you've said so far.........and that is saying something. The "church that became the official religion of the Roman Empire"..............IS the Catholic Church..........and they absolutely believe and always have that one must use the benefit of clergy for confession of sins...............which leads to salvation. To not confess to clergy before death leaves one's soul in limbo........that then goes to Purgatory. According to the Catholic teaching........."the "state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed" which occurs by the refusal to repent of mortal sin before one's death. And who does a Catholic repent too? Clergy in a confessional booth.

And Gnostics were not "direct knowledge of the Devine". They followed a version of pagan beliefs mixed with the Gospel and spiced up with their own rational of what God surely meant.....and end up with a version of spirituality that they agreed with and believed was the recipe for salvation. No Gnostic was ever in contact with Christ as he walked the earth on a continued basis to have
direct knowledge" of the message of salvation.