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As the Christian faith grew, so also did the fury of "the prince of the power of the air" (satan).
 
The very faith that calls us to be "ambassadors of Christ" would be challenged in the 4th and 5th centuries. Men began to look at “self” and take their focus off Christ. Some men in the church became deceivers of the truth.
As Jude states in his Letter:

For certain persons have crept in unnoticed,
those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation,
ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness
and deny our Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. (v.4)

 
The Church in the 5^th Century grew to be huge and was divided into 5 great centers, culminating in a man-made entity:

Thus the Church was changing its nature,
making itself over into the Image of the Roman Empire.
(Halley's Bible Handbook, p. 770)

 
The Imperial Church of the 4^th and 5^th centuries had become an entirely different institution from the "Persecuted Church" of the first, second, and third centuries.
 

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