24. When the Church came into the favor of the state under Constantine in the fourth century, there sprang up many orders of recluses who "maintained that communion with God was to be sought by mortifying sense, by withdrawing the mind from all external objects, by macerating the body with hunger and labor, and by a holy sort of indolence, which confined all the activity of the soul to a lazy contemplation of things spiritual and external." Mosheim, the author just quoted, continues: "The Christian church would never have been disgraced by this cruel and unsocial enthusiasm, nor would any have been subjected to those keen torments of mind and body to which it gave rise, had not many Christians been unwarily caught by the specious appearance and the pompous sound of that maxim of the ancient philosophy: 'That in order to the attainment of true felicity and communion with God, it was necessary that the soul should be separated from the body, even here below; and that the body was to be macerated and mortified for this purpose.'"--(Mosheim, "Eccl. Hist.," Cent. IV, Part II, ch. 3:12, 13.) 25. The fruit of this ill-sowing was the growth of numerous orders of monks, and the maintenance of monasteries. Celibacy was taught as a virtue, and came to be made a requirement of the clergy, as it is in the Roman Catholic church to-day. An unmarried clergy, deprived of the elevating influences of home life, fell into many excesses, and the corruption of the priests has been a theme of reproach throughout the centuries. "The Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him,"--(Gen. 2:18.) and again, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh."--(Verse 24.) His inspired apostle proclaimed: "Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord."--(I Cor. 11:11. Compare I Tim. 4:3.) Nevertheless an apostate church decrees that its ministers shall be forbidden to follow the law of God.