The subject of the vocation, ordination, obedience, etc., of the clergy, is laboriously discussed by Thomassin (Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. ii. p. 1-83) and Bingham (in the 4th book of his Antiquities, more especially the 4th, 6th, and 7th chapters). When the brother of St. Jerom was ordained in Cyprus, the deacons forcibly stopped his mouth, lest he should make a solemn protestation which might invalidate the holy rites.