The wise Bishop Meletius, however, desired to employ his powers in some sphere of active labour in the Church. As a preliminary step to this end, he ordained him soon after his baptism to the office of reader. This order appears not to have been instituted in the Church before the third century; at least there is no allusion to it in writers of the first two centuries, and frequent references in writers of the third and fourth.[41] The duty of readers was to read those portions of Scripture which were introduced into the first service or “Missa Catechumenorum,” which preceded the Communion, or “Missa Fidelium,” so called because only the baptized were admitted to it. They read from the Pulpitum or Tribunal Ecclesiæ, or Ambo, the reading-desk of the Church, which must not be confounded with the Bema, or Tribunal of the Sanctuary. This last was identical with the altar, or rather the steps of the altar, and no rank lower than that of deacon was permitted to read from this position. By the Novells of Justinian,[42] eighteen was fixed as the youngest age at which any one could be ordained to this office. But previous to this limitation, it was not uncommon to appoint mere children. Cæsarius of Arles is said to have been made a reader at the tender age of seven, and Victor Uticensis, describing the cruelties of the Vandalic persecution in Africa, affirms that among 500 clergy or more who perished by sword or famine, were many “infant readers.”[43] The ceremony of ordination appears to have been very simple. The Fourth Council of Carthage ordains that the bishop should testify before the congregation to the purity, the faith, and conversation of the candidate. Then in their presence he is to place a Bible in his hands with these words: “Take thou this book, and be thou a reader of the word of God, which office if thou discharge faithfully and profitably thou shalt have part with those who have ministered the word of God.”[44] CHAPTER III. COMMENCEMENT OF ASCETIC LIFE—STUDY UNDER DIODORUS—FORMATION OF AN ASCETIC BROTHERHOOD—THE LETTERS TO THEODORE. A.D. 370.