But, generally, from that time forward, the charismatic state in the Church more and more disappeared, though single Charismata, and individuals endowed with the same, remained. In the first Epistle to the believers in Thessalonica, Paul had made it specially prominent that his Gospel had worked there, not as mere word, but with demonstration of the power of the Holy Spirit (i. 5). In the Epistles to the Philippians and Colossians, there is no longer the slightest intimation of, or reference to, the Charismata, although in both communities the occasion for such an allusion was very appropriate--in Philippi through the Jewish opponents, {360} and in Colossae on account of the heretical dangers and the threatening Gnostic asceticism. On the other hand, in the Epistle to the Philippians, bishops and deacons are already mentioned as ministers of the community. Then, in the Pastoral Epistles, not only is there no mention of the Charismata, but a state of the community is set forth which is wholly different from the charismatic. The communities in Asia Minor, the Ephesian first of all, are partly threatened, partly unsettled by Gnostic heresies, strifes of words, foolish controversies, empty babbling about matters of faith, of doctrines of demons, of an advancing godlessness corroding like a gangrene (1 Tim. iv. 1-3, vi. 3 ff. 20, 2 Tim. ii. 14 ff.). All the counsels which are here given to Timothy, the conduct in regard to these evils which is recommended to him, all is of a nature as though Charismata no longer existed to any extent, as though, in lieu of the first spiritual soaring and of the fulness of extraordinary powers manifesting itself in the community, the bare prose of the life of the Church had already set in."(1) Regarding this it is not necessary for us to say more than that the representation which is everywhere made, in the Acts and elsewhere, and which seems to be confirmed by Paul, is that all the members of these Christian communities received the Holy Spirit, and the divine Charismata, but that nowhere have we evidence of any supernatural results produced by them. If, however, the view above expressed be accepted, the difficulty is increased; for, except in the allusions of the Apostle to Charismata, it is impossible to discover any difference between communities which had received miraculous spiritual "gifts" and those which had not done so. On the contrary, it {361}