God, he holds, has created all animals for the service of man ; Christ attended the mamage feast at Cana as a guest, sat at table with Zaccheus, with publicans and sinners, and was called by the Pharisees a glutton and a wine-bibber ; and the apostle says : To the pure all things are pure, and nothing to be re- fused, if it be received with thanksgiving. He went still further, however, and, with the Stoics, denied all gradations of moral merit and demerit, consequently also all gradations of reward and punishment. He overlooked the ])rocess of development in both good and evil. He went back of all outward relations to the inner mind, and lost all subor- dinate differences of degree in the great contrast between true Christians and men of the world, between regenerate and un- regenerate ; whereas the friends of monasticism taught a higher and lower morality, and distinguished the ascetics, as a special class, from the mass of ordinary Christians. As Christ, says he, dwells in believers, without difference of degree, so also be- lievers are in Chiist without difference of degree or stages of development. There are only two classes of men, righteous and wicked, sheep and goats, five wise virgins and five foolish, good trees with good fruit and bad trees with bad fruit. He appealed also to the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, -who all received equal wages. Jerome answered him witli such things as the parable of the sower and the different kinds of ground, the parable of the different numbers of talents with corresponding rewards, the many mansions in the Father's house (by which Jovinian singularly understood the different I I § 47. HELVIDIUS, VIGIL ANTIUS, AND AERIUS. 231 churches on earth), the comparison of the resurrection bodies with the stars, which diifer in glory, and the passage : " lie which soweth sparingly, shall reap also sparingly ; and he which soweth bountifully, shall reap also bountifully," ' § 47. Helvidius, Vigilantius, and Aerius. See especially the tracts of Jerome quoted in the preceding section. IlELYiDirs, whether a layman or a priest at Rome it is un- certain, a pupil, according to the statement of Gennadius, of the Arian bishop Auxentius of Milan, wrote a work, before the year 383, in refutation of the perpetual virginity of the mother of the Lord — a leading point with the current glorification of celibacy. He considered the married state equal in honor and glory to that of virginity. Of his fortunes we know nothing. Augustine speaks of Helvidians, who are probably identical with the Antidicomarianites of Epiphanius. Jerome calLs Helvidius, indeed, a rough and uneducated man,^ but proves by quotations of his arguments, that he had at least some knowledge of the Scriptures, and a certain ingenuity. He ap- pealed in the fii'st place to Matt. i. 18, 24, 25, as implying that Joseph knew his wife not before, but after, the birth of the Lord ; then