Primitive Christianity, like any other religion, was susceptible to morbid affections, and the germs of disease with which the atmosphere around it was charged found early a lodgment within it, and soon matured into portentous fertility. The persecutions of the Church, the terrible corruption of the world, the troubles and temptations consequent on the first junction of Christianity with the Imperial Power, the mistaken idea that the world which the Church had manifestly failed to transform, or even preserve, was doomed, and that Christ was speedily coming in His glory to judge it, strengthened the ascetic tendency to come out and be separate from it.[257] By the end of the third century the deserts of Egypt and Arabia, and the mountains of Asia Minor, were so peopled with recluses that in one spot alone there were ten thousand men and twenty thousand women. At the close of another century Monachism had a home in every province of the Oriental Church, and monks and nuns formed “a nation,” as distinct from the clergy as the clergy were from the common believers, and in many instances they were hated and persecuted by clergy and laity alike.[258] The original purpose of the founders of the new institution, however, was not to shelter mystics and visionaries, but to train soldiers and martyrs. Solitude was not intended to be an asylum for the weak, or an infirmary for the diseased, but an arena for the training and testing of athletes. “Come,” says Chrysostom,[259] “and see the tents of the soldiers of Christ. Come, behold their order of battle.” Augustine also refers to them as “milites Christi,” even as later on they were designated as “the chivalry of the Church” and “the paladins of God.” Though not of the world, and being above its ways, they were yet in it and for it. So these retreats were not only technical schools, representing the industries essential to the well-being of man; they were also academies for sacred studies, from which went forth champions like Athanasius to defend the faith against the heretic, and like Basil to defend the Church against the Empire. They were also brotherhoods of charity, in which in self-imposed austerities men grew tender in respect for the miseries of others, and anticipated in much more unfavourable times the hospitals for “sick children” and “lepers” and “incurables,” which we are inclined to regard as the peculiar products of the latest Christian centuries.[260] Of course, early Christian Monachism had its ridiculous extravagances, in types like the Stylites and Browsers; and of course even its soberer types soon degenerated through over cultivation, till it became a greater hindrance to the spread of Christianity than all external opposition and persecution. The spirit of piety which it originated was speedily poisoned by superstition; theological discussion supplanted the love of earnest study; the spirit of obedience and loyalty was superseded by that of intrigue and revolt.