Prosperity and peace introduced the distinction of the vulgar and the ascetic Christianity. The loose and imperfect practice of religion satisfied the conscience of the multitude. The prince or magistrate, the soldier or merchant, reconciled their fervent zeal, and implicit faith, with the exercise of their profession, the pursuit of their interest, and the indulgence of their passions. But the ascetics, who obeyed and abused the rigid precepts of the gospel, were inspired by the savage enthusiasm that represents man as a criminal and god as a tyrant. They seriously renounced the business, and the pleasures, of the age; abjured the use of wine, flesh, and of marriage; chastised their body, mortified their affections, and embraced a life of misery, as the price if eternal happiness. In the reign of Constantine, the ascetics fled from a profane and degenerate world to perpetual solitude or religious society.

From Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, London: Wordsworth, 1998 (first published from 1776 to 1788), p. 733.