Basil, Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysostom, Martin of Tours, lived in rigid abstinence and poverty, and devoted his income to religious and charitable objects. But this very power and this temporal advantage of the episcopate became also a lure for avarice and ambition, and a temptation to the lordly and secular spirit. For even under the episcopal mantle the human heart still beat, with all those weaknesses and passions, which can only be overcome by the continual influence of Divine grace. There were metropolitans and patriarchs, especially in Alexandria, Constantinople, and Rome, who, wbile yet hardly past the age of persecution, for- got the servant form of the Son of God and the poverty of his apostles and martyrs, and rivalled the most exalted civil officials, nay, the emperor himself, in worldly pomp and luxury. Not seldom were the most disgraceful intrigues employed to gain the holy office. No wonder, says Ammianus, that for so ^ Orat. xlvii. So Theodoret, Hist. eccl. ii. 27, at the beginning. Macarius is said to have worn the gilded vestment in the administration of bai)tism. I i § 54. OKGANTZATrON OF THE HIEKARCHY. 267 Bplendid a prize as the bisliopric of Kome, men strive witli tlie utmost passion and persistence, when rich j)resents from Lxdies and a more tlian imperial siimptuousness invite them.' The Roman prefect, Prtetextatus, declared jestingly to the bishop Damasus, who had obtained the office through a bloody battle of parties, that for such a price he would at once turn Chris- tian himself.^ Such an example could not but shed its evil influence on the lower clergy of the great cities. Jerome sketches a sarcastic description of the Roman priests, who squandered all their care on dress and perfumery, curled their hair with crisping pins, wore sparkling rings, paid far too great attention to women, and looked more like bridegrooms than like clergymen.' And in the Greek church it was little better. Gregory Nazianzen, himself a bishop, and for a long time patriarch of Constantinople, frequently mourns the ambition, the official jealousies, and the luxury of the hierarchy, and utters the wish that the bishops might be distinguished only by a higher grade of virtue. § 54. Orgmiization of the Hierarchy : Country Bishops, City Bishops, and Metropolitans. The episcopate, notwithstanding the unity of the office and its riglits, admitted the different grades of country bishop, ordinary city bishop, metropolitan, and patriarch. Such a distinction had already established itself on the basis of free religious sentiment in the church ; so that the incumbents of the apostolic sees, like Jeinisalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, and.. Rome, stood at the head of the hierarchy. But this gra- ' Amm. Marcell. xxvii. c. 3, sub anno 36Y : . . . " ut dotentur oblationibus matronarum procedantque vehiculis insidentes, circumspecte vestiti, epulas curantes profusas, adeo ut eorum convivia regales superent mensas." But then with this pomp of the Roman prelates he contrasts the poverty of the worthy country bishops. ^ Besides Ammianus, Jerome also states