While the admirers of ascetic virginity became louder and more enthusiastic in their praises of that blessed condition, it is fair to presume that they were daily more sensible of a lower standard of morality in the ministers of the altar, and that their susceptibilities were more deeply shocked by the introduction and growth of abuses. While the church was kept purified by the fires of persecution, it offered few attractions for the worldly and ambitious. Its ministry was too dangerous to be sought except by the pure and zealous Christian, and there was little danger that pastors would err except from over-tenderness of conscience or unthinking ardor. When, however, its temporal position was incalculably improved by its domination throughout the empire, it became the avenue through which ambition might attain its ends, while its wealth held out prospects of idle self-indulgence to the slothful and the sensual. A new class of men, dangerous alike from their talents or their vices, would thus naturally find their way into the fold, and corruption, masked under the semblance of austerest virtue, or displayed with careless cynicism, would not be long in penetrating into the Holy of Holies. Immorality must have been flagrant when, in 370, the temporal power felt the necessity of interfering by a law of the Emperor Valentinian which denounced severe punishment on ecclesiastics who visited the houses of widows and virgins.[108] When an increasing laxity of morals thus threatened to overcome the purity of the church, it is not surprising that the advocates of asceticism should have triumphed over the more moderate and conservative party, and that they should improve their victory by seeking a remedy for existing evils in such laws as should render the strictest continence imperative on all who entered into holy orders. They might reasonably argue that if nothing else were gained, the change would at least render the life of the priest less attractive to the vicious and the sensual, and that the rigid enforcement of the new rules would elevate the character of the church by preventing such wolves from seeking a place among the sheep. If by such legislation they only added fresh fuel to the flame; if they heightened immorality by hypocrisy and drove into vagabond licentiousness those who would perhaps have been content with lawful marriage, they only committed an error which has ever been too common with earnest men of one idea to warrant special surprise.