Did the one God make the world, or a lesser god, as the Gnostics said?

Hermas fl. c. 140 ADThe Shepherd Mandate 1.1

First of all, believe that God is one, who created and completed all things, and made all things out of what was not into being, who holds all things, and alone cannot be held.

The first commandment of a widely read Roman book. Irenaeus quotes this line as "Scripture".

Ptolemy the Valentinian fl. c. 150 ADLetter to Flora, preserved in Epiphanius, Panarion 33.7.3–5

This one is the craftsman and maker of this whole world and what is in it. Being different from the essences of the other two and standing between them, he might rightly be called the Middle. And if the perfect God is good by nature, as he is, ... and the one of the opposing nature is evil and wicked, ... then the one who stands between them, being neither good nor evil nor unjust, might properly be called just.

The Gnostic view in a Gnostic's own words: the maker of the world and giver of the Law is a lesser god, below the perfect Father. Epiphanius quotes the whole letter.

Theophilus of Antioch fl. c. 180 ADTo Autolycus 2.4

God's power is shown in this, that he makes whatever he wishes out of what is not; just as giving life and movement belongs to no one else but God alone.

Against Plato's eternal matter: God did not shape a world from material that was already there.

Irenaeus of Lyons c. 130–c. 202 ADAgainst Heresies 1.22.1

We hold the rule of truth: that there is one God Almighty, who made all things through his Word, and arranged them, and made them out of what was not, so that they might be, as Scripture says: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and all their power by the Spirit of his mouth" (Psalm 33:6).

Irenaeus sets the rule of faith against every Gnostic system.

Tertullian c. 155–c. 220 ADAgainst Hermogenes 1.3–4

He takes away all that God is by refusing that he made all things out of nothing. Turning from the Christians to the philosophers, from the Church to the Academy and the Porch, he took from the Stoics the idea of putting matter alongside God, matter that also always was, neither born nor made, with no beginning at all and no end.

Hermogenes, a Christian painter, taught that God shaped eternal matter. Tertullian answers that God made everything from nothing.

Tertullian on Marcion c. 155–c. 220 ADAgainst Marcion 1.2.1–3

He also had a certain Cerdo as teacher of this scandal: the two of them easily imagined they saw two gods, being blind; for they had not seen the one properly. ... The one god, whom he was forced to confess, he destroyed by defaming him as evil; the other, whom he labored to invent, he built up by preferring him as good.

Marcion of Pontus (about 140) taught that the Creator of the Old Testament was a different, lesser god from the Father of Jesus.