It was not mere love of an indolent life and a desire to escape from military service that swelled the numbers in the desert. The condition of the decaying Roman world led men to despair of the Commonwealth, and of the possibility of their being able to save their own souls in the midst of the general corruption. "The people were exhausted by compulsory taxes, to be spent in wars which did not concern them, or in Court luxury in which they had no share. In the municipal towns liberty and justice were dead. The curials, who were responsible for the payment of the public moneys, tried their best to escape the unpopular office, and when compelled to serve wrung the money in self-defence out of the poorer inhabitants by every kind of tyranny. Private profligacy among all ranks was such as cannot be described in any modern pages. The regular clergy of the cities were able to make no stand against the general corruption of the age because--at least if we are to trust such writers as Jerome and Chrysostom--they were giving themselves up to ambition and avarice, vanity and luxury; and, as a background to all these seething heaps of decay, misrule and misery, hung the black cloud of the barbarians, waxing stronger and stronger so that the wisest Romans saw clearly as the years rolled on, they would soon be the conquerors of the Caesars and the masters of the Western world. "No wonder, if in such a state of things, the minds of men were stirred by a passion akin to despair, which ended in a new and grand form of suicide. It would have ended often, but for Christianity, in such an actual despair as that which had led in past ages more than one noble Roman to slay himself, when he lost all hope for the Republic. That the world--such at least as they saw it then--was doomed, Scripture and their own reason taught them. They did not merely believe, but saw, in the misery and confusion, the desolation and degradation around them, that the world was passing away, and the lust thereof, and that only he who did the will of God could abide for ever. They did not merely believe, but saw that the wrath of God was revealed from Heaven against all unrighteousness of men. Under these terrible forebodings, men began to flee from a doomed world, and try to be alone with God, if by any means they might save each man his own soul in that dread day." [Footnote: Kingsley (C.), "The Hermits," Lond. 1868.]