The state of things which immediately preceded this grand attack of the empire on the Church is thus described by Cyprian in the interval which followed the persecution of Decius and preceded that of Gallus; and the words of one who not only taught but died for his teaching carry with them no common force. "As long repose had corrupted the discipline which had come down to us from God, the divine judgment awakened our faith from a declining, and if I may so speak an almost slumbering state; and whereas we deserved yet more for our sins, the most merciful Lord has so moderated all, that what has passed has seemed rather a trial of what we were than an actual infliction. Everyone was applying himself to the increase of wealth, and forgetting both what was the conduct of believers under the Apostles, and what ought to be their conduct in every age, they with insatiable eagerness for gain devoted themselves to the multiplying of possessions. The priests were wanting in religious devotedness; the ministers in entireness of faith; there was no mercy in works, no discipline in manners. Men wore their beards disfigured, and women stained their complexion with a dye. The eyes were changed from what God made them, and a lying colour was passed upon the hair. The hearts of the simple were misled by treacherous artifices, and brethren became entangled in seductive snares; ties of marriage were formed with unbelievers; members of Christ abandoned to the heathen. Not only rash swearing was heard, but even false; persons in high place were swollen with contemptuousness; poisoned reproaches fell from their mouths; and men were sundered by unabating quarrels. Numerous bishops, who ought to be an encouragement and example to others, despising their sacred calling, engaged themselves in secular vocations, relinquished their chair, deserted their people, strayed among foreign provinces, hunted the markets for mercantile profits, tried to amass large sums of money, while they had brethren starving within the Church, took possession of estates by fraudulent proceedings, and multiplied their gains by accumulated usuries."(304)
Such was the end of the long peace which succeeded the persecution of Septimius Severus, and yet it was followed at once by that ten years' conflict which if stained with apostasies at first, soon became rife in martyrdoms. And as the former relaxation seems to prove that the third century among Christians was no ideal time in which moral corruptions and abuses did not largely exist, so the improvement which trial and suffering at once produced, calling forth some of the greatest triumphs which the Faith has ever known, seems to indicate that the divine power of the Church lies not in forming a community free from imperfections, or even secured from scandals, but in building up a portion of her children to sanctity. At all times the wheat and the chaff lie together on her threshing-floor, and the flail of suffering winnows them. But those who seek for a time when all professing believers were saints, will find it neither when the Apostles taught nor afterwards.