hment of the child and the mother, the inborn reverence of the son
to the father. It is the highest praise of St. Fulgentius that he
overcame his mother's tenderness by religious cruelty."[168]

The full warranty for Dean Milman's stricture is seen in the following
passage from St. Jerome:--

"Though your little nephew twine his arms around your neck; though your
mother, with dishevelled hair, and tearing her robe asunder, point to
the breast with which she suckled you; though your father fall down on
the threshold before you, pass on over your father's body. Fly with
tearless eyes to the banner of the cross. In this matter cruelty is the
only piety.... Your widowed sister may throw her gentle arms around
you.... Your father may implore you to wait but a short time to bury
those near to you, who will soon be no more; your weeping mother may
recall your childish days, and may point to her shrunken breast and to
her wrinkled brow. Those around you may tell you that all the household
rests upon you. Such chains as these the love of God and the fear of
hell can easily break. You say that Scripture orders you to obey your
parents, but he who loves them more than Christ loses his soul. The
enemy brandishes a sword to slay me. Shall I think of a mother's
tears?"[169]

Gibbon said of the ascetic movement that the Pagan world regarded with
astonishment a society that perpetuated itself without marriage.
Unfortunately this perpetuation was secured by the sacrifice of some of
the dearest interests of the race. For, in general, one may say that
idealistic teaching of any kind appeals most powerfully to those who are
least in need of it. The world would at any time lose little, and might
possibly gain much, were it possible to restrain a certain class from
parentage. But there is no evidence that monasticism ever had its effect
on that kind of people; the presumption is indeed in the contrary
direction. The careless and brutal hear and are unaffected. The more
thoughtful and desirable alone are influenced. And there can be little
doubt that the Church in appealing to certain aspects of human nature
dissuaded from parentage those who were most fitted for the task. There
was a practical survival of the unfittest. Nothing is more striking, in
fact, in the early history of Christianity than the comparative absence
of home life and of the domestic ideals. Dean Milman remarked that in
all the discussion concerning celibacy he could not