Pagans Made Bishops for Money

The rest of their actions will perhaps be thought unbelievable, and will fill everyone with astonishment because of their extreme atrocity. Yet it is necessary to speak of them, so that your Christian zeal and piety may see that their slanders and false charges against us are designed for no other purpose than to drive us out of the churches and bring in their own ungodliness in our place. [a]

For when some of the lawful bishops, men of advanced age, had been banished and others forced to flee, pagans and catechumens, men who held the first places in the senate and men notorious for their wealth, were immediately commissioned by the Arians to preach the holy faith instead of Christians. No inquiry was made any longer, as the apostle commanded, “if anyone is blameless.” Instead, following the practice of the ungodly Jeroboam, whoever could give the most money was named bishop; and it made no difference to them even if the man happened to be a pagan, so long as he supplied them with money. Those who had been bishops since the time of Alexander, monks and ascetics, were banished; and men skilled only in slander corrupted the apostolic rule, as far as it lay in their power, and polluted the churches. Truly their false accusations against us have gained them much, in that they are able to commit wrong and to do such things as these in your time. So the words of Scripture may be applied to them: “Woe to those through whom my name is blasphemed among the Gentiles.”