stained '" for the present distress," ' and from aversion to the encumbrances of the married state. Jerome pressed him with the alternative of marrying and proving the equality of celibacy with married life, or giving up his opposition to his own con- dition.° Jerome gives a very unfavorable picture of his char- acter, evidently colored by vehement bitterness. He calls Jovinian a servant of corruption, a barbarous writer, a Chris- tian Epicurean, who, after having once lived in strict asceticism, now preferred earth to heaven, vice to virtue, his belly to Christ, and always strode along as an elegantly dressed bride- groom. Augustme is much more lenient, only reproaching Jovinian with having misled many Roman nuns into marriage by holding before them the examples of pious women in the Bible. Jovinian was probably provoked to question and oppose monasticism, as Gieseler supposes, by Jerome's extrava- gant praising of it, and by the feeling against it, which the death of Blesilla (384) in Rome confirmed. And he at first found extensive sympathy. But he was excommunicated and banished with liis adherents at a council about the year 390, by Siricius, bishop of Rome, who was zealously opposed to the marriage of priests. He then betook himself to Milan, where the two monks Sarmatio and Barbatian held forth views like liis own ; but he was treated there after the same fashion by the bishop, Ambrose, who held a council against him. From this time he and his party disappear from history, and before the year 406 he died in exile." According to Jerome, Jovinian held these four points : (1) Yirgins, widows, and married persons, who have once been baptized into Christ, have equal merit, other things in their conduct being equal. (2) Those, who are once with full • 1 Cor. vii. 26. "^ Adv. Jovin. lib. i. c. 40 (Opera, ii. 304) : " Et tamen iste formosus monachus, orassus, nitidus, dealbatus, et quasi sponsus semper incedens, aut uxorem ducat ut icqualem yirginitatem nuptiis probet ; aut, si non duxerit, frustra contra nos verbi," agit, cum opere nobiscum sit." ^ Augustine says, De hser. c. 82 : "Cite ista hseresis oppressa et extincta est;'' and Jerome writes of Jovinian, in 406, Adv. Vigilant, c. 1, that, after having been condemned by the authority of the Roman church, he dissipated his mind in the en- joyment of his lusts. I § 46, OPPOSITION TO MONASTICIBM. JOVINIAN. 229 faith born again by baptism, cannot be overcome (subverti) by the devil. (3) There is no difference between abstaining from food 'and enjoying it with thanksgiving. (4) All, who keep the baptismal covenant, will receive an equal reward in heaven. He insisted chiefly on the first point ; so that Jerome de- votes the whole first book of his refutation to this point, while he disposes of all the other heads in the second. In favor of the moral equality of married and single life, he appealed to Gen. ii. 24, where