time for them to have an historical value, even when divested of their miraculous ornaments. They bring before us the popular tendencies and modes of thought, and show us how powerful an instrument the passions of the people became, when skilfully aroused and directed by those in authority. * * * * * The Western church was thus at length irrevocably committed to the strict maintenance of ecclesiastical celibacy, and the labors of the three great Latin Fathers, Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustin, were crowned with success. It is perhaps worth while to cast a glance at such evidences as remain to us of the state of morals about this period and during the fifth century, and to judge whether the new rule of discipline had resulted in purifying the church of the corruptions which had so excited the indignation of the anchorite of Bethlehem, and had nerved him in his fierce contests with those who opposed the enforced asceticism of the ministers of Christ. How the morals of the church fared during the struggle is well exhibited in the writings of St. Jerome himself, as quoted above, describing the unlawful unions of the agapetæ with ecclesiastics and the horrors induced by the desire to escape the consequences of incautious frailty. Conclusions not less convincing may be drawn from his assertion that holy orders were sometimes assumed on account of the superior opportunities which clericature gave of improper intercourse with women;[143] and from his description of the ecclesiastics, who passed their lives in female companionship, surrounded by young female slaves, and leading an existence which differed from matrimony only in the absence of the marriage ceremony.[144] But a short time after the recognition of the rule appeared the law of Honorius, promulgated in 420, to which reference has already been made. It is possible that the permission of residence there granted to the wives of priests may have been intended to act as a partial cure to evils caused by the enforcement of celibacy; and this is rendered the more probable, since other portions of the edict show that intercourse with improper females had increased to such a degree that the censures of the church could no longer restrain it, and that an appeal to secular interference was necessary, by which such practices should be made a crime to be punished by the civil tribunals.[145] That even this failed lamentably in purifying the church may be gathered from the proceedings of the provincial councils of the period.