of the Church was, at this time, truly deplorable.... In those very
places, that were consecrated to the advancement of piety and the
service of God, there was little else to be seen than ghostly ambition,
insatiable avarice, pious frauds, intolerable pride, and a supercilious
contempt of the natural rights of the people, with many other vices
still more enormous" (p. 161). The wealth of the Church increased
rapidly; it grew fat on the wages of sin. "Abandoned profligates, who
had passed their days in the most enormous pursuits, and whose guilty
consciences filled them with terror and remorse, were comforted with the
delusive hopes of obtaining pardon, and making atonement for their
crimes by leaving the greatest part of their fortune to some monastic
society. Multitudes, impelled by the unnatural dictates of a gloomy
superstition, deprived their children of fertile lands and rich
patrimonies in favour of the monks, by whose prayers they hoped to
render the Deity propitious" (p. 161). The only new sect of any
importance in this century is that of the Monothelites, later known as
Maronites; they taught that Christ had but one will, but the doctrine is
wrapped up in so many subtleties as to be almost incomprehensible. They
were condemned, in the sixth General Council, held at Constantinople,
A.D. 680. It was during this century that "Boniface V. enacted that
infamous law, by which the churches became places of refuge to all who
fled thither for protection; a law which procured a sort of impunity to
the most enormous crimes, and gave a loose rein to the licentiousness of
the most abandoned profligates" (p. 164). The effect of this law was
that the monasteries became the refuge of bandits and murderers, who
issued from them to plunder and to destroy, and paid for the security of
their persons by bestowing on their hosts a portion of the spoil they
had collected during their raids. Such were the civilizing and purifying
effects of Christianity.