Accordingly, the _Apostolical Canons_ distinguished, as Bingham (_Antiquities of the Christian Church_) reports them, between abstinents, διὰ τὴν ἀσκησιν and διὰ τὴν βδελυπίαν, _i.e._, between those who abstained to exercise self-control, and those who did so from disgust and abhorrence of what, in ordinary and orthodox language, are too complacently and confidently termed “the good creatures of God.” This distinction, it must be added, holds only of the prevailing sentiment of the Orthodox Church as finally established. During several centuries--even so late as the Paulicians in the seventh, or even as the Albigeois of the thirteenth, century--_Manicheism_, as it is called, or a belief in the inherent evil of all matter, was widely spread in large and influential sections of the Christian Church--nor, indeed, were some of its most famous Fathers without suspicion of this heretical taint. According to the _Clementine Homilies_, “the unnatural eating of flesh-meat is of demoniacal origin, and was introduced by those giants who, from their bastard nature, took no pleasure in pure nourishment, and only lusted after blood. Therefore the eating of flesh is as polluting as the heathen worship of demons, with its sacrifices and its impure feasts; through participation in which, a man becomes a fellow-dietist (ὁμοδίαιτος) with demons.”[92] That superstition was often, in the minds of the followers both of Plato and of St. Paul, mixed up with, and, indeed, usually dominated over, the reasonable motives of the more philosophic advocates of the higher life, there can be no sort of doubt; nor can we claim a monopoly of rational motives for the mass of the adherents of either Christian or Pythagorean abstinence. Yet an impartial judgment must allow almost equal credit to the earnestness of mind and purity of motive which, mingled though they undoubtedly were with (in the pre-scientific ages) a necessary infusion of superstition, urged the followers of the better way--Christian and non-Christian--to discard the “social lies” of the dead world around them. At all events, it is not for the selfish egoists to sneer at the sublime--if error-infected--efforts of the earlier pioneers of moral progress for their own and the world’s redemption from the bonds of the prevailing vile materialism in life and dietary habits.