[194] The church itself experienced many corruptions before the date of Constantine. Among the recent converts from paganism a crop of heresies sprang up. “When the sacred choir of the Apostles,” says Hegesippus, (_apud_ Euseb., iii, 32,) “had passed away, then the combinations of impious error arose by the fraud and delusion of false teachers.” The schisms of Marcian and Novatian, Valentine and Montanus, early rent the Christian community. The exclusive ecclesiasticism of Cyprian, the episcopal assumptions of Victor, and the secular ambition and rapacity of Paul of Samosata, were portents of the spirit which afterward bore such bitter fruit. That pride and luxury had begun to invade the simplicity of primitive times, which, when the church basked in the sunshine of imperial favour, so completely withered its spiritual power. CHAPTER III. 120 THE DISUSE AND ABANDONMENT OF THE CATACOMBS. From the period of the Edict of Milan, A. D. 313, a new era opens in the history of the Catacombs. Christianity, emerging from those gloomy recesses where she had so long hidden in darkness, walked boldly in the light of day. She laid aside her lowly garb, put on the trappings of imperial state, and at length, unhappily, exchanged her primitive simplicity for worldly power and splendour. But therein was her danger. The shadow of that power shed a upas influence over the church. The unhallowed union between the bride of heaven and a sinful world gave birth to corruption and religious error. Pampered when subservient to the policy of the Cæsars, she soon became its willing instrument, and stained her snowy robes by complicity with imperial vice. Christianity became at length “a truth grown false,” and men, to use the fine figure of D’Aubigné, forsaking the precious perfume of faith, bowed down before the empty vessel that had contained it. The influence of Constantine seems to have been fraught with more of evil than of good to the new religion that he espoused. He appears to have adopted the Christian name from expediency rather than from conviction, and, stained with the kindred blood of wife and son and nephew, ill deserves the title of Saint, bestowed in fulsome adulation by a venal church. Even the priests of the false gods, aghast with horror at his crimes, exclaimed, “There is no expiation for deeds like these.” He used both pagans and Christians, both orthodox and 121 heretics, as instruments for his political purposes. His object seems to have been rather to raise and strengthen a hierarchy of ecclesiastical supporters than to assist the cause of truth; and he imposed on the organization of the Greek and Latin churches that monarchical and secular character which they have ever since retained.[195]