Side by side with this diminution in the strictness of the moral tests of admission and of continued membership, was a growth in the importance of the intellectual elements, of which I spoke in a previous Lecture. The idea of holiness and purity came to include in early times the idea of sound doctrine. Hegesippus,[718] in speaking of a church as a virgin, gives as his reason, not its moral purity, but the fact that it was not corrupted by foolish doctrines. The growth, both within the Church and on its outskirts, of opinions which were not the opinions of the majority—the tendency of all majorities to assert their power—the flocking into the Christian fold of the educated Greeks and Romans, who brought with them the intellectual habits of mind which dominated in the age—gave to the intellectual element an importance which it had not previously possessed. Knowledge, which had always been in some sort an element in Christianity, though not as a basis of association, came to assert its place side by side with love. Agreement in opinion, which had been the basis of union in the Greek philosophical schools, and later in the Gnostic societies, now came to form a new element in the bond of union within and between the Churches.[719] But the practical necessity, when once an intellectual element was admitted, of giving some limitations to that element by establishing a rule of faith and a standard list of apostolic documents, caused stress to be laid at once upon the intellect and the region within which it moved. It was, that is to say, necessary to ensure that the intellectual element was of the right kind, and this of itself gave emphasis to the new temper and tendency. The profession of belief in Christ which had been in the first instance subordinate to love and hope, and which had consisted in a simple recognition of him as the Son of God, became enucleated and elaborated into an explicit creed; and assent to that creed became the condition, or, so to speak, the contract of membership. The profession of faith must be in the words of the Christian rule.[720] The teaching of the catechumens was no longer that which we find in the “Two Ways”—the inculcation of the higher morality; it was the _traditio symboli_, the teaching of the pass-word and of its meaning. The creed and teaching were the creed and teaching of the average members of the communities. In religion, as in society, it is the average that rules. The law of life is compromise. There were two collateral causes which contributed to the change and gave emphasis to it.