While this slight effort at thought was thus frowned upon, vice made its way unchecked and unrebuked by the authorities.  “The impiety and licentiousness of the greater part of the clergy arose, at this time, to an enormous height, and stand upon record in the unanimous complaints of the most candid and impartial writers of this century.  In the East, tumult, discord, conspiracies, and treason reigned uncontrolled, and all things were carried by violence and force.  These abuses appeared in many things, but particularly in the election of the Patriarchs of Constantinople....  In the western provinces, the bishops were become voluptuous and effeminate to a very high degree.  They passed their lives amidst the splendour of courts, and the pleasures of a luxurious indolence, which corrupted their taste, extinguished their zeal, and rendered them incapable of performing the solemn duties of their function; while the inferior clergy were sunk in licentiousness, minded nothing but sensual gratifications, and infected with the most heinous vices the flock whom it was the very business of their ministry to preserve, or to deliver from the contagion of iniquity.  Besides, the ignorance of the sacred order was, in many places, so deplorable that few of them could either read or write, and still fewer were capable of expressing their wretched notions with any degree of method or perspicuity” (p. 193).  “Many other causes also contributed to dishonour the Church, by introducing into it a corrupt ministry.  A nobleman who, through want of talents, activity, or courage, was rendered incapable of appearing with dignity in the cabinet, or with honour in the field, immediately turned his views towards the Church, aimed at a distinguished place among its chiefs and rulers, and became, in consequence, a contagious example of stupidity and vice to the inferior clergy.  The patrons of churches, in whom resided the right of election, unwilling to submit their disorderly conduct to the keen censure of zealous and upright pastors, industriously looked for the most abject, ignorant, and worthless ecclesiastics, to whom they committed the cure of souls” (p. 193).  Of the Roman pontiffs, Mosheim says:  “The greatest part of them are only known by the flagitious actions that have transmitted their names with infamy to our times” (p. 194).  And “the enormous vices that must have covered so many pontiffs with infamy in the judgment of the wise, formed not the least obstacle to their ambition in these memorable times, nor hindered them from extending their influence and augmenting their authority both in church and state” (p. 195).  Among the vast mass of forgeries which gradually built up the supremacy of the Roman see, the famous Isidorian Decretals deserve a word of notice.  They were issued about A.D. 845, and consisted of “about one hundred pretended decrees of the early Popes, together with certain spurious writings of other church dignitaries and acts of synods.  This forgery produced an