The limits of this work preclude the historic treatment of the rise and development of the host of false doctrines and practises that finally bound the people in the thralldom of superstition and plunged the world into the darkness of spiritual night. One who is free from such influences can scarcely read without feelings of disgust the elaborate treatises of these church fathers wherein they extol the virtues of virginity as forming a new order of life, as an evidence of divinity, as making virgins while in this world "equal to the angels of God," and as a certain surety of special rewards in heaven. From this false standard proceeded at length the celibacy of the clergy and monkery with all their attendant evils. And the time would fail me to tell of the introduction of images and image-worship in the Western Church and of that superstitious regard for miserable relics of every description and kind. True evangelical faith was at length lost to view, buried beneath the rubbish of men's traditions. The treatment of such matters, however, belongs to the church historian, and as the general facts are well-known, it is unnecessary here to make more than a brief reference to them so as to prepare the mind for that treatment of the reformation which is a special object of the present work. [Footnote A: Tertullian is the earliest writer that clearly and unmistakably teaches trine immersion, or records its practise. But here he honestly confesses that it is a "somewhat ampler pledge than the Lord has appointed in the gospel."] CHAPTER VI RISE OF ECCLESIASTICISM [Sidenote: Two phases of apostacy] In order to understand the place which the work of reformation has in the plan and purpose of God respecting his church, we must carefully observe the twofold character of the apostasy. Both these phases are clearly outlined in that remarkable prediction of Paul to which reference has already been made, recorded in the second chapter of Second Thessalonians. The first phase, described as "_a falling away_," was that decline from true Christianity which we have considered in the preceding chapter as the Corruption of Evangelical Faith. The second phase was the rise and development of a foreign element which was from its beginning "the mystery of iniquity" and which in certain respects usurped the true place of Jehovah himself in spiritual worship in the temple of God. This phase now demands our special attention.