And we have evidence that in the primitive Church the Apostle's rule about digamists was not considered absolute. In one of his Montanist treatises Tertullian taunts the Catholics in having even among their bishops men who had married twice, and who did not blush when the Pastoral Epistles were read;[50] and Hippolytus, in his fierce attack on Callistus, Bishop of Rome, states that under him men who had been twice and thrice married were ordained bishops, priests, and deacons. And we know that a distinction was made in the Greek Church between those who had married twice _as Christians_, and those who had concluded the second marriage before baptism. The latter were not excluded from ordination. And some went so far as to say that if the first marriage took place before baptism, and the second afterwards, the man was to be considered as having been married only once.[51] This freedom in interpreting the Apostle's rule not unnaturally led to its being, in some branches of the Church, disregarded. St. Paul says, "Do not ordain a man who has married more than once." If you may say, "This man, who has married more than once, shall be _accounted_ as having married only once;" you may equally well say "The Apostle's rule was a temporary one, and we have the right to judge of its suitableness to our times and to particular circumstances." We may feel confidence that in such a matter it was not St. Paul's wish to deprive Churches throughout all time of their liberty of judgment, and the Church of England is thus justified. FOOTNOTES: [49] As the _Dictionary of Christian Antiquities_ (vol. i. p. 324) has given its sanction to the view that "St. Paul _required_ the presbyter-bishop to have had the experience of marriage and with at least a preference for those who had brought up children (1 Tim. iii. 2, 4), and extended the requirement even to the deacons of the Church (1 Tim. iii. 11, 12)," it seems to be worth while to repeat the declaration of Ellicott and Huther, that "the strange opinion of Bretschneider, that μιᾶς is here the indefinite article, and that Paul meant that a bishop should be married, hardly needed the elaborate refutation which is accorded to it by Winer, _Grammar of New Testament_, III. 18 (Eng. Tr., p. 146)." Would any Englishman ever say "a bishop must have one wife," when his meaning was "a bishop must have a wife"? [50] _De Monog._, xii. [51] See Döllinger's _Hippolytus and Callistus_ (pp. 129-147 Eng. Trans.) for a full discussion of the question. CHAPTER XII. _THE RELATION OF HUMAN CONDUCT TO THE MYSTERY OF GODLINESS._