At rare intervals a vision might perhaps be vouchsafed to some Montanistic old woman, or a brother might now and then have a dream that seemed to be of supernatural origin; but the overmastering power of religious enthusiasm was a thing of which the Montanists knew as little as the Catholics.
Although the Liberal record of the pope was a thing of the past, and his policy had, since Gaeta, become firmly identified with the reactionary policy of Antonelli, yet the early years of his pontificate were in such lively recollection as to allow of Pius IX.'s appearing to some extent in the light of a national hero.
At the close of the first decade of the 10th century it might be said that over the greater part of Africa slave raiding was a thing of the past.
That the practice was common is indeed implied by the terms in which Bacon speaks of it, and it is not improbable that the fact of these gifts being taken by officials was a thing fairly well known, although all were aware of their illegal character, and it was plain that any public exposure of such dealings would be fatal to the individual against whom the charge was made out.
To reconcile the ways of God to man had been the ambition of Chrysippus, as we know from Plutarch's criticisms. He argued plausibly that natural evil was a thing indifferent - that even moral evil was required in the divine economy as a foil to set off good.
