tunity for preparation, and passed, at the instance of the popu- lar voice or of circumstances, immediately from the service of the state to that of the church, even to the episcopal office ; though several councils prescribed a previous test of their ca- pacity in the lower degrees of reader, deacon, and presbyter. Often, however, this irregularity turned to the advantage of the church, and gave her a highly gifted man, like Ambrose, whom the acclamation of the people called to the episcopal see of Milan even before he was baptized. Gregory Nazianzen laments that many priests and bishops came in fresh from the counting house, sunburnt from the plow, from the oar, from the army, or even from the theatre, so that the most holy order of all was in danger of becoming the most ridiculous. " Only he can be a physician," says he, " who knows the nature of diseases ; he, a painter, who has gone through much practice * E. g. Chrysostom : De sacerdotio ; Augustine : De doctrina Christiana ; Jo- rome : ia several letters ; Gregory the Great : Regula jmstoralis. 236 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. in mixing colors and in drawing forms ; bnt a clergyman may be found with perfect ease, not thoroughly wrought, of course, but fresh made, sown and full blown in a moment, as the legend says of the giants.' We form the saints in a day, and enjoin them to be wise, though they possess no wisdom at all, and bring nothing to their spiritual office, except at best a good will.'"' If such complaints were raised so early as the end of the Kicene age, while the theological activity of the Greek church was in its bloom, there was far more reason for tliem after the middle of the fifth century and in the sixth, especially in the Latin church, where, even among the most eminent clergymen, a knowledge of the original languages of the Holy Scriptures was a rare exception. The opportunities which this period offered for literary and theological preparation for the ministry, were the following : 1. The East had four or five theological schools, which, however, were far from supplying its wants. The oldest and most celebrated was the catechetical school of Alexandria. Favored by the great literary treasures, the extensive commercial relations, and the ecclesiastical impor- tance of the Egyptian metropolis, as well as by a succession of distniguished teachers, it flourished from the middle of the second century to the end of the fourth, when, amidst the Origenistic, Nestorian, and ]\Ionophysite confusion, it withered and died. Its last ornament M'as the blind, but learned and pious Didymus (340-395). From the Alexandrian school proceeded the smaller insti- tution of Caesarea in Palestine, which was founded by Origen, after his banishment from Alexandria, and received a new but temporary impulse in the beginning of the fourth century from his admirer, the presbyter Pamphilus, and from his friend Eusebius, It