The conception of this ‘cultus’ of God is well expressed in a passage of Simeon of Durham, who, in his History of the Kings, under the year 781, says, some 250 years after, of a certain Dregmo, in the territory of the church at Hexham, that ‘he greatly feared God and diligently devoted himself, as far as his means allowed, to the exercise of works of charity, leading a life in all respects apart from the customs of his countrymen—a man of remarkable simplicity and innocence, and of profound devotion and reverence towards the saints of God; on which account his neighbours held him in great honour, and called him a true God-worshipper.’[451] In the seventh century attempts were made by several councils to bring the solitaries more under the monastic rule. By the fifth canon of the Council of Toledo, held in 646, it was provided that ‘well-instructed monks alone should be allowed to live separate from a cloister as recluses, and become the trainers of others in the higher forms of ascetic life. Those recluses and wanderers who are unworthy must be brought within a cloister, and in future no one must be devoted to this highest form of the ascetic life, as a recluse, who had not first been trained in a monastery to the knowledge and practice of the monastic life.’[452] By the Council of Trullo, held in 692, it was provided, by canon 41, that those who would live separate in their own cells must have first passed three years in a monastery, and that any one who has once withdrawn himself to a solitary cell must not again leave it; and by canon 42 that, as there are hermits who come to the towns in black clothing and long hair, and associate with secular persons, it is ordered that such persons shall be tonsured and enter a monastery, wearing the monastic dress. If they will not do this, they must be expelled from the town.[453] [Sidenote: A.D. 747. Order of Secular Canons instituted.]