Further on, he continues: “And the hearers of Callistus being delighted with his decrees (doctrines), continue deluding themselves and many besides, crowds of whom flock together in his place of teaching. Therefore their numbers increase, they boasting of their multitude, on account of the pleasures which were not permitted by Christ, whom despising they do not put restraint on any sin, alleging that they pardon those who are pleased with his (Callistus’s) opinions. For he even permitted women _of high rank_, if they were unmarried and _burned with passion through their time of life, and if they were not disposed to lose their own rank through a legal marriage, to have_ one man whom they might choose as a bedfellow, whether a slave or free, and to deem him in place of a husband, though she had not been married to him legally. Whence women, reputed believers, began to resort to drugs for producing sterility, and to gird themselves round so as to expel what was being conceived on account of their not wishing to have a child either by a slave or by a mean fellow, on account of their family connexions and their excessive wealth. Behold into how great impiety that lawless person has proceeded, teaching adultery and murder at the same time, and withal, after such audacious acts, they, lost to all shame, attempt to call themselves a Catholic Church.” The printed part in italics is based on an amended text. The text adopted is that proposed by Abbé de Hir and approved by de Rossi. It embodies the emendations of several critics and contains the fewest changes. But though the text is corrupt, there can be no doubt of the general sense. Callistus claimed for women the privilege which was accorded to men. Senators were not allowed to form a legal marriage with freedwomen, but they might have them as concubines. Callistus allowed a similar liberty to women of senatorial families. These women could not marry a freeman who was an actor or whose father or mother had been actors, nor could they marry a freedman, and no Roman could marry a slave. If they went through any form of marriage with such persons, the marriage was null and void. But Callistus declared that a permanent union of a senatorial woman with a man of the humbler class or with a slave was a real marriage, notwithstanding the law. Probably he extended the permission more widely, and declared that any permanent union between one Christian and another was a real marriage. He might reason that a marriage between two people who were citizens of heaven was as valid as a marriage between two citizens of Rome, and if it was carried out with the sanction of the bishop and the church it mattered not whether it was according to Roman law or not. And thus a senator might marry a freedwoman or a slave, though the law regarded such marriages as null and void. It is not unlikely that the _lex de maritandis ordinibus_, while forbidding senators to