ions of the faith felt it
necessary to denounce the secularity of many of the ministers of the
Church. Before the Decian persecution not a few of the bishops were mere
worldlings, and such was their zeal for money-making, that they left
their parishes neglected, and travelled to remote districts where, at
certain seasons of the year, they might carry on a profitable traffic
[313:1]. If we are to believe the testimony of the most distinguished
ecclesiastics of the period, crimes were then perpetrated to which it
would be difficult to find anything like parallels in the darkest pages
of the history of modern Christianity. The chief pastor of the largest
Church in the Proconsular Africa tells, for instance, of one of his own
presbyters who robbed orphans and defrauded widows, who permitted his
father to die of hunger and treated his pregnant wife with horrid
brutality. [313:2] Another ecclesiastic, of still higher position,
speaks of three bishops in his neighbourhood who engaged, when
intoxicated, in the solemn rite of ordination. [313:3] Such excesses
were indignantly condemned by all right-hearted disciples, but the fact,
that those to whom they were imputed were not destitute of partisans,
supplies clear yet melancholy proof that neither the Christian people
nor the Christian ministry, even in the third century, possessed an
unsullied reputation.

Meanwhile the introduction of a false standard of piety created much
mischief. It had long been received as a maxim, among certain classes of
philosophers, that bodily abstinence is necessary to those who would
attain more exalted wisdom; and the Gentile theology, especially in
Egypt and the East, had endorsed the principle. It was not without
advocates among the Jews, as is apparent from the discipline of the
Essenes and the Therapeutae. At an early period its influence was felt
within the pale of the Church, and before the termination of the second
century, individual members here and there were to be found who eschewed
certain kinds of food and abstained from marriage. [314:1] The pagan
literati, who now joined the disciples in considerable numbers, did much
to promote the credit of this adulterated Christianity. Its votaries,
who were designated _ascetics_ and _philosophers_ [314:2] did not
withdraw themselves from the world, but, whilst adhering to their own
regimen, still remained mindful of their social obligations. Their
self-imposed mortification soon found admirers,