Paralleling this remarkable evolution in the organisation of the Church was a marked departure from the simplicity and purity of the early Christian life on the part of both clergy and laity. The "Apostolical Constitutions," the "Canons of the Holy Apostles," and the decrees of the councils of Elvira (306), Arles (314), Neo-Cæsarea (314), and Nicæa (325) all reveal the worldliness of the clergy in the laws passed against their engaging in worldly pursuits, frequenting taverns and gambling houses, accepting usury, habits of vagrancy, taking bribes, and immorality. Because the multitude of pagan converts were carrying their ideas and practices into the Church, many corrective measures were enacted against this degeneration. The licentiousness of the clergy became a still more crying sin among the laity, for it was unreasonable to expect the rank and file to be better than their leaders. FOOTNOTES: [148:1] Acts xix., 21; xxiii., 11; xxv., 11; xxviii., 14 _ff._ [148:2] Rom. i., 8. [150:1] Gregorovius, i., 5. [151:1] Greenwood, _Cathedra Petri_, i., 104, 107. [151:2] The East had four Patriarchs: Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople. [151:3] See Chap. VI. [151:4] _Against Heresies_, iii., c. 3. [152:1] _On Modesty_, § 1. [152:2] Greenwood, _Cathedra Petri_, i., 107-108. [152:3] Gibbon, i., 579 _ff._ See Chap. V. [152:4] Greenwood, _Cathedra Petri_, i., 175. [152:5] See Chap. VII. [153:1] Origen said: "_Extra hanc domum_, i.e., _extra ecclesiam nemo salvator_." _Hom._ 3. St. Cyprian of Carthage asked: "Do they that are met outside of the Church of Christ think that Christ is with them when they meet? . . . It is not possible for one to be a martyr who is not in the church." _Unity of the Church_, ch. 13, 14. [153:2] Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Alexandria, and, later, Constantinople. The four early patriarchates were of apostolic foundation. [153:3] Greenwood, _Cathedra Petri_, i., 193. [154:1] Greenwood, _Cathedra Petri_, i., 164, 165. [154:2] 1 Cor. vi., 1, 13. [155:1] See Smith and Cheetham, _Dict. of Christ. Antiq._, for a full discussion of the paschal controversy. [156:1] Cyprian, _Ep._ 49, 55. Greenwood, i., 168, thinks this quotation a later interpolation. [156:2] Cyprian, _Ep._ 68. [156:3] _Ibid._, _Ep._ 67. [156:4] Euseb., _Eccl. Hist._, vii., 30. [156:5] It must be remembered that Rome had no monopoly of these appeals and that her decisions were not always accepted in these early days. _Cf._ Greenwood, i., 171 _ff._ [157:1] Euseb., _Eccl. Hist._, v., 23-25. [157:2] Irenæus, _Against Heresy_, iii., 3. [157:3] _Library of Ante-Nic. Fathers_, v. [157:4] _Ibid._, xv. [158:1] _Library of Ante-Nic. Fathers_, viii. [158:2] Greenwood, _Cathedra Petri_, i., 192. [159:1] Euseb., _Eccl. Hist._, iv., 23; vii., 6. [159:2] _To Corinth_, Ep. i., c. 44. [160:1] Schaff, iii., 351. [160:2] _Ep._, 43: 5; 55: 8; 59: 14; _Lib. of Ante-Nic. Fathers_, viii.