Many of the men who should have resisted this gross secularization of the church, who ought to have set their faces against the departure from apostolic ideals by exalting the standards of the earlier Christianity; these men, the clergy of the Christian church, had deserted their post of duty and surrendered to the prevailing worldliness.

Jerome describes, with justifiable sarcasm, these moral weaklings, charged with the solemn responsibility of preaching a pure gospel to a dying empire.  “Such men think of nothing but their dress; they use perfumes freely, and see that there are no creases in their leather shoes.  Their curling hair shows traces of the tongs; their fingers glisten with rings; they walk on tiptoe across a damp road, not to splash their feet.  When you see men acting that way, think of them rather as bridegrooms than as clergymen.  If he sees a pillow that takes his fancy, or an elegant table-cover, or, indeed, any article of furniture, he praises it, looks admiringly at it, takes it into his hand, and, complaining that he has nothing of the kind, begs or rather extorts it from its owner.”  Such trifling folly was fatal.  The times demanded men of vigorous spirit, who dared to face the general decline, and cry out in strong tones against it.  The age needed moral warriors, with the old Roman courage and love of sacrifice; martyrs willing to rot in prison or shed their blood in the street, not effeminate men, toying with fancy table-covers and tiptoeing across a sprinkled road.  “And as a background,” says Kingsley, “to all this seething heap of corruption, misrule and misery, hung the black cloud of the barbarians, the Teutonic tribes from whom we derive our best blood, ever coming nearer and nearer, waxing stronger and stronger, to be soon the conquerors of the Caesars and the masters of the world.”

But there were many pure and sincere Christians—­a saving remnant.  The joyous alacrity with which men and women responded to the monastic call, and entered upon careers of self-torture for the sake of deliverance from moral corruption, shows that the spirit of true faith was not extinct.  These seekers after righteousness may be described as “a dismal and fanatical set of men, overlooking the practical aims of life,” but it is a fair question to ask, “if they had not abandoned the world to its fate would they not have shared that fate?” “The glory of that age,” says Professor Dill, “is the number of those who were capable of such self-surrender; and an age should be judged by its ideals, not by the mediocrity of conventional religion masking worldly self-indulgence.  This we have always with us; the other we have not always.”

Yet the sad fact remains that the transforming power of Christianity was practically helpless before the surging floods of vice and superstition.  The noble struggles of a few saints were as straws in a hurricane.  The church had all she could do to save herself.