among the remains of the ascetic sects, and were acceptable even to those among the orthodox who were yielding to the increasing influence of asceticism. The fierce temporal persecution of the still Pagan emperors, and the unavailing anathemas of the church, as yet confined to mere spiritual censures, seemed only to give fresh impetus to the proselyting energy of the Elect, and to scatter the seed more widely among the faithful. After this period we hear but little of the earlier ascetic heresies; the system of Manes, as moulded by his followers, was so much more complete, that it swallowed up its prototypes and rivals, and concentrated upon itself the vindictiveness of a combined church and state. So thorough was this identification that in 381 an edict of Theodosius the Great directed against the Manichæans assumes that the sects of Encratitæ, Apotactitæ, Hydroparastitæ, and Saccofori were merely nominal disguises adopted to elude detection.[59] That Manichæism, in fact, exercised a substantial influence over orthodoxy is shown in other directions besides that of asceticism. It can scarce be doubted that the expansion of the penitential remission of sins into the system of purchasable indulgences received a powerful impulsion from the precedent set by Manes; and the denunciations of Ephraem Syrus form a fitting precursor to those of Luther. In the same way the Eucharist was diverted from its original form of a substantial meal—one of the means by which the charity of the church was administered to the poor—into the symbolical wafer and wine which assimilated it so closely to the Izeshne sacrifice, the most frequent Mazdean rite, and one which, like the Mass, was customarily performed for the benefit of departed souls.[60] Manes, in combining Mazdeism with Christianity, had adopted the Eucharist in the Mazdean form, and had confined the use of the cup to the priesthood; and this lay communion in one element became so well recognized as a test of Manichæism that Leo the Great ordered the excommunication of all who received the sacrament after that fashion.[61] It may therefore be remarked as a curious coincidence that when Manichæism was revived by the Albigenses, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the church, which until then had preserved its ancient custom, adopted the lay communion in one element and adhered to it so rigidly that, as we shall see hereafter, not even the dread of the Hussite schism nor the earnest requests of those who remained faithful during the perils of the Reformation, could induce it to grant the cup to the laity. Lay communion in one element drew a line of distinction between the priest and his flock which the former would not willingly abandon.