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When we add that the arguments based on the probability of persecution, and on the certainty of the speedy coming of Christ, have been disallowed by experience, it would seem that little or nothing can be concluded for the guidance of the modern Church from the apostle's evident preference for the single life. Moreover, his language in the later Epistle to the Ephesians places marriage on so exalted a plane that it is not possible to imagine any higher, and we may conclude, if we will, that experience tended to correct whatever there was of error in the earlier opinions.

Asceticism was one aspect of a form of thought which was widely spread in the world