2. About what time did the notion arise in respect to a double rule of life?
3. What great evil grew out of this erroneous idea?
4. From whence did Christians derive their ideas which demanded the austerities they practiced?
5. Give an account of the origin of monasteries and nunneries.
6. How did the celibacy of the clergy originate?
7. When did it become an express law of the church?
8. What shameful scandal arose from this doctrine in the 3rd century?
9. Under what circumstances were lying and deceiving accounted virtues?
{ 191} 10. What evil grew out of this wicked notion?
11. What can you say of the general moral condition of the church in the early Christian centuries?
12. State the moral condition of the church in the 4th century. In the 5th.
13. What of the moral state of the church subsequent to the 5th?
14. Give the substance of Dr. Milner's admission concerning the moral state of the church in the 10th century.
15. State what several circumstances led to the destruction of the church of Christ.
16. Recount the admissions which noted Christian writers make concerning the apostasy from the Christian religion. (Notes end of section).
We have considered those events that occurred in the church by which its form and spirit of government were altered, its doctrines corrupted, its ordinances changed, and its truths and powers subverted. We now turn to the scriptures to show that all these things were predicted by the apostles and prophets of God, being foreseen by the spirit of revelation.
1. False Teachers to Arise in the Church.--On the occasion of Paul's last visit to Ephesus, he had the elders assembled, and in the course of his address to them said:
I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. Taken heed, therefore, unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God which he hath purchased with his own blood. For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things to lead away disciples after them.[112]
2. In his second letter to Timothy the same apostle again prophesies of the coming of these false teachers: