11. If further evidence be wanted as to the fires of disaffection smoldering within the Church, and so easily fanned into destructive flame, let the testimony of Eusebius be considered with respect to conditions characterizing the second half of the third century. And, in weighing his words, let it be remembered that he had expressly recorded his purpose of writing in defense of the Church, and in support of her institutions. He bewails the tranquillity preceding the Diocletian outbreak, because of its injurious effect upon both officers and members of the Church. These are his words: "But when by excessive liberty we have sunk into indolence and sloth, one envying and reviling another in different ways, and we were almost, as it were, on the point of taking up arms against each other, and were assailing each other with words, as with darts and spears, prelates inveighing against prelates, and people rising up against people, and hypocrisy and dissimulation had arisen to the greater heights of malignity, then the divine judgment, which usually proceeds with a lenient hand, whilst the multitudes were yet crowding into the Church, with gentle and mild visitations began to afflict its episcopacy; the persecution having begun with those brethren that were in the army. * * * But some that appeared to be our pastors, deserting the law of piety, were inflamed against each other with mutual strifes, accumulating quarrels and threats, rivalry, hostility, and hatred to each other, only anxious to assert the government as a kind of sovereignty for themselves."--(Eusebius, "Ecclesiastical History," Book VIII, ch. 1. See note 4, end of chapter.) 12. As further illustrative of the decline of the Christian spirit toward the end of the third century, Milner quotes the following observation of Eusebius, an eye-witness of the conditions described: "The heavy hand of God's judgment began softly, by little and little, to visit us after His wonted manner; * * * but we were not at all moved with His hand, nor took any pains to return to God. We heaped sin upon sin, judging like careless Epicureans, that God cared not for our sins, nor would ever visit us on account of them. And our pretended shepherds, laying aside the rule of godliness, practiced among themselves contention and division." He adds that the "dreadful persecution of Diocletian was then inflicted on the Church as a just punishment, and as the most proper chastisement for their iniquities."--(Milner, "Church History," Cent. III, ch. 17.)