ministers, their thoroughly organized polity, their obstinacy, their claims to superior holiness, naturally excited the odium of the Pagan populace, and frequently provoked the wrath and the interference of Imperial authority. From a condition of meekness, humility, and self-abnegation, the Church had become the prey of hostile factions, and was already tainted with scandal. Its synods were polluted with the blood of contending sectaries. Its councils resounded with the unseemly disputes and mutual recriminations of prelates more ambitious for the attainment of supreme power than for the discovery of divine truth. The Trinitarian controversy had nourished prejudices which centuries of apparent tranquillity had failed to eradicate. The spirit of persecution, incomprehensible to the polytheists, the essence of whose creed was universal toleration, and who could not appreciate the motives impelling the Christian to the employment of force to establish his doctrines, had early begun to manifest itself. Monasticism, synonymous with ignorance and intolerance, represented the sentiments and hopes of the most degraded of the populace in every community of the Empire. At Alexandria and Nicea it had forced, by weight of numbers and by turbulent demonstrations of violence, the adoption of some of the most important articles of Christian faith. In every ecclesiastical feud it had invariably espoused the cause of bigotry and imposture. The monk of the sixth century united in his character the inconsistent attributes of the priest and the politician, the saint and the demagogue. His retreat in the solitude of the desert was visited by thousands of weeping penitents, suppliants for the doubtful but cherished privilege of his blessing. With his companions, armed with clubs and stones, he fomented disorder in the streets of great capitals. His voluntary renunciation of the follies of the world was no bar to his greed of power. He dictated the policy of the Church. He settled involved points of casuistry. He formulated canons of ecclesiastical discipline. He enforced the claims of his faction by intrigues, by corruption, by the commission of the most revolting crimes. He aspired to and often attained the episcopal dignity. The superior numbers, the fanatical spirit, the unanimous resolution of his order, gave him a preponderating influence in the Church not to be heedlessly resisted. Before the imperial organization of the Papacy, the monk was the dominant factor in the determination of the laws, the measures, and the regulations of Christendom.