The first point which I will ask you to note is, that this very transformation of the idea of a particular religion into that of a universal religion—this conception of an all-embracing human society, naturally, if unconsciously, carried with it a relaxation of the bonds of discipline. The very earnestness which led men to preach the Gospel and to hasten the Kingdom, led them also to gather into the net fish of every kind. There was always a test, but the rigour of the test was softened. The old Adam asserted itself. There were social influences, and weakness of character in the officers, and a condonation by the community. It became less and less practicable to eject every offender against the Christian code. It was against this whole tendency that Montanism was a rebellion—not only against the officialism of Christianity, but also against its worldliness.[717] The earlier conception of that code, in which it embraced sins of thought, came to be narrowed. The first narrowing was the limitation to open sins. The Christian societies fell under the common law which governs all human organizations, that no cognizance can be taken of the secret thoughts of the heart. The second limitation was, that even when a man had committed an open sin, and had been therefore excluded from the community, he might be re-admitted. The limitation was not accepted without a controversy which lasted over a great part of two centuries, and which at one time threatened to rend the whole Christian communities into fragments. The Church was gradually transformed from being a community of saints—of men who were bound together by the bond of a holy life, separated from the mass of society, and in antagonism to it—to a community of men whose moral ideal and moral practice differed in but few respects from those of their Gentile neighbours. The Church of Christ, which floated upon the waves of this troublesome world was a Noah’s ark, in which there were unclean as well as clean.