SECTION VIII.
SKETCH OF THE ENTHUSIASM OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH.

An intelligent Christian, fraught with scriptural principles in their simplicity and purity, but hitherto uninformed of Church history, who should peruse discursively the ecclesiastical writers of the age of Jerom, Ambrose, and Basil, would presently recoil with an emotion of disappointment, perplexity, and alarm. That within a period which does not exceed the reach of oral tradition, the religion of the apostles should have so much changed its character, and so much have lost its beauty, he could not have supposed possible. He has heard indeed of the corruptions of popery, and of the enormous abuses prevalent in "the dark ages;" and he has been told too, by those who had a special argument to prop, that the era of the secular prosperity of the church was that also of the incipient corruption of religion. But he finds in fact that there is scarcely an error of doctrine, or an absurdity of practice, ordinarily attributed to the popes and councils of later times, and commonly included in the indictment against Rome, which may not, in its elements, or even in a developed form, be traced to the writings of those whose ancestors, at the third or fourth remove only, were the hearers of Paul and John.

But after the first shock of such an unprepared perusal of the fathers has passed, and when calm reflection has returned, and especially when, by taking up these early writers from the commencement, the progression of decay and perversion has been gradually and distinctly contemplated, then, though the disappointment will in great part remain, the appalling surmises at first engendered in the modern reader's mind, will be dispelled, and he will even be able to pursue his course of reading with pleasure, and to derive from it much solid instruction. Considerations such as the following will naturally present themselves to him in mitigation of his first painful impressions.

While contemplating in their infant state those notions and practices (of the third century, for example) which afterwards swelled into enormous evils, it is difficult not to view them as if they were loaded with the blame of their after issues; and then it is hard not to attribute to their originators and promoters the accumulated criminality that should be shared in small portions by the men of many following generations. But the individuals thus unfairly dealt by, far from forecasting the consequences of the sentiments and usages they favored, far from viewing them, as we do, darkened by the cloud of mischiefs that was heaped upon them in after times, saw the same objects bright and fair in the recommendatory gleam of a pure and a venerated age. The very abuses which make the twelfth century abhorrent on the page of history, were, in the fourth, fragrant with the practice and suffrage of a blessed company of primitive confessors. The remembered saints, who had given their bodies to the flames, had also lent their voice and example to those unwise excesses which at length drove true religion from the earth. Untaught by experience, the ancient church surmised not of the occult tendencies of the course it pursued, nor should be loaded with consequences which human sagacity could not well have foreseen.

Each of the great corruptions of later ages took its rise, in the first, second, or third century, in a manner which it would be harsh to say was deserving of strong reprehension. Thus the secular domination exercised by the bishops, and at length supremely by the bishops of Rome, may be traced very distinctly to the proper respect paid by the people, even in the apostolic age, to the disinterested wisdom of their bishops in deciding their worldly differences. The worship of images, the invocation of saints, and the superstition of relics, were but expansions of the natural feeling of veneration and affection cherished towards the memory of those who had suffered and died for the truth. And thus, in like manner, the errors and abuses of monkery all sprang, by imperceptible augmentations, from sentiments perfectly natural to the sincere and devout Christian in times of persecution, disorder, and general corruption of morals.

Again: human nature, which is far more uniform than may be imagined, when suddenly it is beheld under some new aspect of time and country, is also susceptible of much greater diversities of habit and feeling than those are willing to believe who have seen it on no side but one. This double lesson, taught by history and travel, should be well learned by every one who undertakes to estimate the merits of men that have lived in remote times, and under other skies.

A caution against the influence of narrow prejudice is obviously more needful in relation to the persons and practices of ancient Christianity, than when common history is the subject of inquiry; for in whatever relates to religion, every one carries with him, not merely the ordinary prepossessions of time and country, but an unbending standard of conduct and temper, which he is forward to compare, in his particular manner, with whatever offends his notions of right. But though the rule of Scripture morals is unchangeable, and must be applied with uncompromising impartiality to human nature under every variety of circumstance, yet is it impractible, at the distance of upwards of a thousand years, so fully to calculate those circumstances, and so to perceive the motives of conduct, as is necessary for estimating fairly the innocence or the criminality of particular actions or habits of life. The question of abstract fitness, and that of personal blameworthiness, should ever be kept apart: at least they should be kept apart when it is asked—and we are often tempted to ask it in the perusal of church history—May such men be deemed Christians, who acted and wrote thus and thus? Before a doubt of this kind could be solved satisfactorily, we must know—what can never be known till the day of universal discovery—how much of imperfection and obliquity may consist with the genuineness of real piety; and again, how much of real obliquity there might be, under the actual circumstances of the case, in the conduct in question. Who can doubt that if the memorials of the present times, copious, and yet inadequate as they must be, shall remain to a distant age, they will offer similar perplexities to the future reader, who, amidst his frequent admiration or approval, will be compelled to exclaim—But how may we think these men to have been Christians? Christianity is in gradual process of reforming the principles and practices of mankind, and when the sanative operation shall have advanced some several stages beyond its present point, the notions and usages of our day, compared with the commands of Christ, as then understood, will, no doubt, seem incredibly defective.

Perhaps it may be said, that in all matters of sentiment, depending on physical temperament, and modes of life, the people of the British islands are less qualified to appreciate the merits of the nations of antiquity than almost any other people of Christendom; and perhaps, also, by national arrogance and pertinacity of taste, we are less ready to bend indulgently to usages unlike our own than any other people. Stiff in the resoluteness of an exaggerated notion of the right of private judgment, we bring all things unsparingly to the one standard of belief and practice; or rather to our particular pattern of that standard; and do not, until our better nature prevails, own brotherhood with Christians of another complexion and costume. A somewhat austere good sense, belonging, first, to the haughtiness and energy of the English character, then to the liberality of our political institutions, and lastly, but not least, to the all-pervading spirit and habits of trade, renders the style of the early Christian writers much more distasteful to us than it has proved to Christians of other countries. Moreover, recent enhancements of the national character, resulting from the diffusion of the physical sciences, and from the more extended prevalence of commercial feelings, have placed those writers at a point much further removed from our predilections than that at which they stood a century ago.

But again: in abatement of the chagrin which a well-instructed Christian must feel in first opening the remains of ecclesiastical literature, it must be remembered, that these works offer a very defective image of the state of religion at the era of their production; that is to say, of religion in its recesses, which are truly the homes of Christianity. Those who write are by no means always those among the ministers of religion whom it would be judicious to select as the best samples of the spirit of their times. Moreover, it is the taste of a following age that has determined which among the writers of the preceding period should be transmitted to posterity; and in many instances, it is manifest, that a depraved preference has given literary canonization to authors whose ambition was much rather to shine as masters of a florid eloquence, than to feed the flock of Christ. It was therefore an egregious error to suppose that the spiritual character of the Church lies broadly on the surface of its extant literature: on the contrary, charity may easily find large room for pleasing conjectures relative to obscure piety, of which no traces are to be found on the pages of saints and bishops. The record of the spiritual church is "on high,"—not in the tomes that make our libraries proud.

These, and other considerations, which will present themselves to a candid and intelligent mind, cannot but remove much of the embarrassment and disrelish that are likely to attend a first converse with ancient divinity. And the pious reader will proceed with heartfelt satisfaction to collect evidence of the fact, which some modern sophists have so much labored to obscure, that the rudiments, at least, of revealed religion, as now understood by the mass of Christians, were then firmly held by the body of the Church. And he will rejoice also to meet with not less satisfactory proofs of the energy and intenseness of practical Christianity among a large number of those who made profession of the name.

Nevertheless, after every fair allowance has been made, and every indulgence given to diversity of circumstance, and after the errors and disgraces of our own times have been placed in counterpoise to those of the ancient church, there will remain glaring indications of a deep-seated corruption of religious sentiment, leaving hardly a single feeling proper to the Christian life in its purity and simplicity. It is not heresy, it is not the denial of the principal scriptural doctrines, that is to be charged on the ancient church; the body of divinity held its integrity. Nor is it the want of heroic virtue that we lament. But a transmutation of the objects of the devout affections into objects of imaginative delectation had taken place, had rendered the piety of a numerous class purely fictitious, had tinged, more or less, with idealism, the religious sentiments of all but a few, and had opened the way by which entered at length, the dense and fatal delusions of a superstition so gross as hardly to retain a redeeming quality.

Not a few of the Christians of the third century, and multitudes in the fourth and fifth, especially among the recluses, having lost the forcible and genuine feeling of guilt and danger, proper to those who confess themselves transgressors of the divine law, and in consequence become blind to the real purport of the Gospel, fixed their gaze upon the ideal splendors of Christianity, were smitten with the phase it presents, of beauty, of sublimity, of infinitude, of intellectual elevation, were charmed with its supposed doctrine of abstraction from mundane agitations; and found within the sphere of its revelations unfathomable depths, where vague meditation might plunge and plunge with endless descents. Fascinated, deluded, and still blinded more by the deepening shades of error, they forgot almost entirely the emotions of a true repentance, and of a cordial faith, and of a cheerful obedience; and in the rugged path of gratuitous afflictions, and unnatural mortifications, pursued a spectral resemblance of piety, unsubstantial and cold as the mists of night.

While hundreds were fatally infatuated by this enthusiastic religion, the piety of thousands was more or less impaired by their mere admiration of it; and very few altogether escaped the sickening infection which its presence spread through the church. A volume might soon be filled with proofs of this assertion, drawn exclusively from the writings of those of the fathers who retained most of the vigor of native good sense, and who held nearest to the purity of Christian doctrine. The works of Chrysostom would afford abundant illustration of this sort. Let his Epistle to the Monks be singled out, which contains many admirable instructions and exhortations on the subject of prayer; and which, with much propriety, recommends the practice of ejaculatory supplication. Nevertheless, there is scarcely a passage quoted from the Scriptures in this piece that is not distorted from its obvious and simple meaning, in such a manner as would best comport with the practices and notions of the ascetic life. If the meaning put by Chrysostom upon the texts he adduces be the true one, then must a large part of the inspired writings be deemed altogether useless to those who have not abjured the duties of common life. Or if such persons may still be permitted to enjoy their part in the Scriptures, not less than the monks, then must we suppose a double sense throughout the Bible. In fact the notion of a double sense flowed inevitably from the monkish institution, and wrought immense mischief in the church.

Modern writers of a certain class have expatiated with disproportionate amplification upon the open and flagrant corruptions which, as it is alleged, followed as a natural consequence from the secular aggrandizement of the clergy, when a voice from the heavens of political power said to the church, "Come up hither." No doubt an enhancement and expansion of pride, ambition, luxuriousness, and every mundane passion, took place at Rome, at Constantinople, at Alexandria, at Antioch, and elsewhere, when emperors, instead of oppressing, or barely tolerating the doctrine of Christ, bowed obsequiously to his ministers. But the very same evils, far from being called into existence by the breath of imperial favor, had reached a bold height even while the martyrs were still bleeding. And moreover, how offensive or injurious soever these scandals might be, either before or after the epoch of the political triumph of the cross, they did but scathe the exterior of Christianity. In every age the vices, always duly blazoned, of secular churchmen, have stained its surface. But when there has been warmth and purity within, the mischief occasioned by such evils has scarcely been more than that of giving point to the railleries of men who would still have scoffed, though not a bishop had been arrogant, nor a presbyter licentious.

Christianity had lost its simplicity and glory in the hands of its most devoted friends long before the alliance between the church and the world had taken place. The copious history of this internal perversion would afford a worthy subject of diligent inquiry; and though materials for a complete explication of the process of corruption are not in existence, enough remains to invite and reward the necessary labor.

The enthusiasm of the ancient Church presents itself under several distinct forms, among which the following may be mentioned as the most conspicuous:—the enthusiasm of voluntary martyrdom; that of miraculous pretension; that of prophetical interpretation, or millenarianism; that of the mystical exposition of Scripture; and that of monachism. Of these, the last, whether or not it was truly the parent of the other kinds, includes them all as parts of itself; for whatever perversions of Christianity were chargeable upon the sentiments and practices of the general church, the same belonged by eminence to the recluses. A review of the principles and the ingredients of this system will better accord with the limits and design of this essay, than an extended examination of facts under the several heads just named.

A strict equity has by no means always been observed by protestant writers in their criminations of the Romish Church. With the view of aggravating the just and necessary indignation of mankind against the mother of corruption, it has been usual to lay open the concealments of the monastery; and with materials before him so various and so copious, even the dullest writer might cheaply be entertaining, eloquent, and vigorous. Meantime it is not duly considered, or not fairly stated, that the reprobation passes back, in full force, to an age much more remote than that of the supremacy of Rome. The bishops of Rome did but avail themselves of the aid of a system which had reached a full maturity without their fostering care; a system which had been sanctioned and cherished, almost without an exception, by every father of the church, eastern and western; which had come down in its elements even from the primitive age, and which had won for itself a suffrage so general, if not universal, that he must have possessed an extraordinary measure of wisdom, courage, and influence, who should have ventured beyond a cautious and moderated censure of its more obvious abuses.

Every essential principle, almost every adjunct, and almost every vice of the monkery of the tenth or twelfth century, may be detected in that of the fourth: or if an earlier period were named, proof would not be wanting to make the allegation defensible. But if it be affirmed, or if it could be proved, that the actual amount of hypocrisy and corruption usually sheltered beneath the roof of the monastery, was greater in the later than in the earlier age, it should as a counterpoise be stated, that in the later period the religious houses contained almost all the piety and learning that anywhere existed: while in the former there was certainly as much piety without as within these seclusions; and much more of learning. The monkery of the middle ages, moreover, stands partially excused by the dense ignorance of the times; while that of the ancient Church is condemned by the surrounding light, both of human and divine knowledge. The very establishments which redeem the age of Roger Bacon from oblivion and contempt, do but blot the times of Gregory Nazianzen.

Eusebius, followed by several later writers, asserts, although in opposition to the most explicit evidence, and manifestly for the purpose of giving sanction to a system so much admired in his time, that the Christian sodalities were directly derived from those of the Essenes and Therapeutics of Judea and Egypt, whom he affirms to have been Christian recluses of the first century, indebted for their rules and establishment to St. Mark. The testimony of the Jew Philo gives conclusive contradiction to this sinister averment; not to mention that of the elder Pliny, and of Josephus; for the minute description given by that writer of the opinions and observances of the sect, besides that it is incompatible with the supposition that the people spoken of were Christians, was actually composed in the lifetime of Paul and Peter, and the recluses are then mentioned as having long existed under the same regulations. Nevertheless, the coincidence between the sentiments and practices of the Jewish and of the Christian monks, is too complete to be attributed either to accident, or merely to the influence of general principles, operating alike in both instances; and the more limited assertion of Photius may safely be adopted, who affirms that "the sect of Jews that followed a philosophic life, whether contemplative or active—the one called Essenes, the other Therapeutics—not only founded monasteries and private sanctuaries, but laid down the rules which have been adopted by those who, in our own times, lead a solitary life."

A reference to the previous existence of monasticism among the Jews, in a very specious, and, in some respects, commendable mode, is indispensable to the forming of an equitable judgment of the conduct of those Christians in Palestine and Egypt, who first abandoned the duties of common life for the indulgence of their religious tastes. They did but adopt a system already sanctioned by long usage, and which, though existing in the time of Christ and the apostles, had not drawn upon itself from him or them any explicit condemnation: and which might even plead a semblance of support from some of their injunctions, literally understood, though plainly condemned by the spirit of Christianity.

Nor is this the sole circumstance that should, in mere justice, be considered in connection with the rise of Christian monachism; for before the mere facts can be understood, and certainly before the due measure of blame can be assigned to the parties concerned, it is indispensable that we divest ourselves of the prejudices, physical, moral, and intellectual, which belong to our austere climate, high-toned irritability, edacious appetites, and pampered constitutions; to our rigid style of thinking, and to our commercial habits of feeling. The Christian of England in the nineteenth century, and the Christian of Syria in the second, stand almost at the extremest points of opposition in all the non-essentials of human nature; and the former must possess great pliability of imagination, and much of the philosophic temper, as well as the spirit of Christian charity, fairly and fully to appreciate the motives and conduct of the latter.

That quiescent under-action of the mind to which we apply the term meditation, is a habit of thought that has been engrafted upon the European intellect in consequence of the reception of Christianity. It is a product almost as proper to Asia as are the aromatics of Arabia, or the spices of India. The human mind does not everywhere expand in this manner, nor spontaneously show these hues of heaven, nor emit this fragrance, except under the fervent suns and deep azure skies of tropical regions. Persia and India were the native soils of the contemplative philosophy; as Greece was the source of the ratiocinative. The immense difference between the Asiatic and the European turn of mind—if the familiar phrase may be used—becomes conspicuous if some pages of either the logic or ethics of Aristotle are compared with what remains of the sentiments of the Gnostics. The influence of Christianity upon the moderns has been to temper the severity of the ratiocinative taste, with a taste for contemplation—contemplation by so much the better than that of the oriental sages, as it takes its range in the heart, not in the imagination. If the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures had been confined to the east, as in fact they have been almost confined to the west, the modern nations of Europe would perhaps have known as little of the compass of the meditative faculty, and of its delights, as did the Romans in the age of Sylla. The Greeks, being near to Asia geographically, and near by similarity of climate, and near by the repeated importations of eastern philosophy, imbibed something of the spirit of tranquil abstraction: yet was it foreign to the genius of that restless and reasoning people. Pythagoras probably, and certainly Plato, whose mind was almost as much Asiatic as Grecian, and whose writings are anomalies in Grecian literature, effected a partial amalgamation of the oriental with the western style of thought. Yet the foreign mixture would probably have disappeared if Christianity had not afterwards diffused eastern sentiments through the west. The combination was again cemented by the writings of those fathers who, after having studied Plato, and taught the rhetoric and philosophy of Greece, devoted their talents to the service of the Gospel.

But though the nations of the west have acquired a taste for this species of thought, it is the distinction of the Asiatic to meditate; as to reason and to act, is the glory of the European. To withdraw the soul from the senses, to divorce the exterior from the inner man, to detain the spirit within its own circle, and to accustom it there to find its bliss; to penetrate the depths and concealments of the heart, to repose during lengthened periods upon a single idea, without a wish for progression or change; or to break away from the imperfections of the visible world, to climb the infinite, to hold converse with supernal beauty and excellence; these are the prerogatives and pleasures of the intellectualist of Asia: and this is a happiness which he enjoys in a perfection altogether unknown to the busy, nervous, and frigid people of the north. If by favor of a peculiar temperament the oriental frees himself from the solicitations of voluptuous indulgence; if the mental tastes are vivid enough to counteract the appetites; then he finds a life of inert abstraction, of abstemiousness, and of solitude, not merely easy, but delicious.

The lassitude which belongs to his constitution and climate more than suffices to reconcile the contemplatist to the want of those enjoyments which are to be obtained only by toil. A genial temperature, and a languid stomach, reduce the necessary charges of maintenance to an amount that must seem incredibly small to the well-housed, well-clothed, and high-fed people of northern Europe. The slenderest revenues are, therefore, enough to free him from all cares of the present life. He has only to renounce married life, its claims and its burdens, and then the skeleton machinery of his individual existence may be impelled in its daily round of sluggish movement, by air, and water, and a lettuce.

The Asiatic character is in no inconsiderable degree affected by the habits which result from the insufferable fervor of the sun at noon, and which compels a suspension of active employments during the broad light of day. The period of venial indolance easily extends itself through all the hours of sultry heat, if necessity does not exact labor. And then the quiescence in which the day has been passed lends an elasticity of mind to the hours of night, when the effulgent magnificence of the heavens kindles the imagination, and enhances meditation to ecstasy. How little beneath the lowering, and chilly, and misty skies of Britain, can we appreciate the power of these natural excitements of mental abstraction!

In an enumeration of the natural causes of the anchoretic life, the influence of scenery should by no means be overlooked. As the gay and multiform beauties of a broken surface, teeming with vegetation (when seconded by favoring circumstances) generate the soul of poetry; so (with similar aids) the habit of musing in pensive vacuity of thought is cherished by the aspect of boundless wastes, and arid plains, or of enormous piles of naked mountain: and to the spirit that has turned with sickening or melancholy aversion from the haunts of man, such scenes are not less grateful or less fascinating than are the most delicious landscapes to the frolic eye of joyous youth. The wilderness of the Jordan, the stony tracts of Arabia, the precincts of Sinai, and the dead solitudes of sand traversed, but not enlivened by the Nile, offered themselves, therefore, as the natural birth-places of monachism; and skirting as they did the focus of religion, long continued (indeed they have never wholly ceased) to invite numerous desertions from the ranks of common life.

A general and extreme corruption of manners, the wantonness, and folly, and enormity of licentious opulence, and the foul depravity which never fails to characterise the misery that follows the steps of luxury, operate powerfully in the way of reaction to exacerbate the motives and to swell the excesses of the ascetic life, when once that mode of religion has been called into being. If the "powers of the world to come" are vividly felt by those who renounce sensual pleasure, the vigor of their self-denial, and the firmness of their resolution in adhering to their rule, will commonly bear proportion to the depth of the surrounding profligacy. Nothing could more effectually starve this species of enthusiasm in any country in which it appeared to be growing, than to elevate public morals. The exaggerated virtue of the monastery can hardly subsist in the near neighborhood of the genuine virtue of domestic life; nor will religious celibacy be in high esteem among a people who regard adultery, not less than murder and theft, as a crime, and with whom fornication is the cloaked vice only of a few. But in Syria and the neighboring countries, at the time when the monastic life took its rise, the most shameless dissoluteness of manners prevailed, and prevailed to a degree that has rarely been exceeded; and there is reason to believe that the early establishments of the Essenes were, in a great measure, peopled by those who, having imbibed the love of virtue from Moses and the prophets, fled, almost by necessity, from a world in which the practice of temperance and purity had become scarcely possible. In after times, the corruption of the great cities, in a similar manner, contributed to fill the monastic houses. The evidence of Josephus (often cited) though there may sometimes be traced in it a little oratorical exaggeration, is sufficient to prove the existence of a more than ordinary profligacy and ferocity among the Jews of his time. This people, destitute of the restraining and refining influence of philosophy and of elegant literature, which ameliorated the manners of the surrounding nations, had been deprived, almost entirely, of all salutary restraints from the divine law by the corrupt evasions of rabbinical exposition. At the same time, the keen disappointment of the national hope of universal dominion under the Messiah, exasperated their native pride to madness.

A large indulgence, to say no more, is therefore due to those ardent, but feeble-minded persons, who, untaught by an experiment of the danger they incurred, fell into the specious error of supposing that a just solicitude for the preservation of personal virtue might excuse their withdrawment from the duties of common life; and the more so as they were willing to purchase a discharge from its claims by resigning their share of its lawful delights. The Christian recluses fled from scenes in which, as they believed, purity could not breathe, to solitudes where (though no doubt they found themselves mistaken) they supposed it would flourish spontaneously. And in truth, though it must be much more difficult to live virtuously under the provoking restraints of monastic vows, than amid the allowed enjoyments of domestic life, refined by Christianity, there may be room to question whether the balance might not really be in favor of the monastery, when the only alternative was an abode with the most extreme profligacy.

So natural to young and ardent minds, under the first fervors of religious feeling, is the wish to run far from the sight and hearing of seductive pleasure, and so plausibly may such a design recommend itself to the simple and sincere, that, even in our own times, if by any means the general opinion of the Christian church could be brought round to favor, or to allow, the practice of monastic seclusion, and if, instead of being on all sides reprobated and ridiculed, it were permitted, encouraged, and admired, the conjecture may be hazarded, that an instantaneous rush from all our religious communities would take place, and a host of the ardent, the imaginative, the melancholic; not to mention the disappointed, the splenetic, and the fanatical, would abandon the domestic circle, and the scenes of business, to people sanctuaries of celibacy and prayer in every sequestered valley of our island.[4]

Besides the ordinary miseries of frequent war, and of a foreign domination, which afflicted, more or less, the other provinces of the Roman empire, the existence, among the Jews, of a species of fanaticism perfectly unparalleled, allowed the Syrian Palestine to taste very imperfectly, the benefit of temperate and vigorous rule. The intractable and malign infatuation of that people had so baffled the wisdom of the Roman government, and had so disturbed its wonted equanimity, as to compel it to treat the unhappy Judea with unmeasured severity. Or if respite were enjoyed from military inflictions, the brutal violences of their own princes, or the atrocities perpetrated by demagogues, kept constantly alive the brand of public and private discord. During such times of insecurity and wretchedness, it is usual for the passive portion of the community to sink into a state, either of reckless sensuality, or of pining despondency. But if, in this class, there are those who have received the consoling hope of a bright and peaceful immortality, it is only natural that, when hunted from every earthly comfort by violence and extortion, they should look wistfully at the grave, and long to rest where "the wicked cease from troubling." In this state of mind it cannot be deemed strange that, upon the first smile of opportunity, they should hasten away from scenes of blood and wrong, and anticipate the wished-for release from life, by hiding themselves in caverns and in deserts.

The most frightful solitude might well appear a paradise, and the most extreme privation be thought luxurious, to those who, in their retreat, felt at length safe from an encounter with man, who, when savage, is by far the most terrible of all savage animals. Such were the causes which had driven multitudes of the well-disposed among the Jews into the wilderness. The severities of persecution afterwards produced the same effect on the Christians; and first on those of Syria and Egypt. This effect is well known to have resulted from the Decian persecution, and probably also from those that preceded it. Little blame can be attributed to Christians who, in such times fled from cities, and took refuge in solitudes; unless, indeed, by so doing they abandoned those whom they ought to have defended.

So long as he could wander unmolested over the pathless mountain track, or exist in the arid desert, the timid follower of Christ not only avoided torture or violent death, but escaped what he dreaded more—the hazard of apostacy under extreme trial. Having once effected his retreat, and borne for a time the loss of friends and comforts, he soon acquired physical habits and intellectual tastes which rendered a life in the wilderness not only tolerable but agreeable. To the fearful and inert, safety and rest are the prime ingredients of happiness, and, if absolute, they go far towards constituting a heaven upon earth.

In the utter solitude of the desert, or in the mitigated seclusion of the monastery, a large proportion probably, of the recluses, soon drooped into the inanity of trivial pietism: a few, perhaps, after the first excitement failed, bit their chain, from day to day, to the end of life: or wrung a wretched solace from concealed vices. But those who, by vigor of mind, supported better the preying of the soul upon itself, could do no otherwise than exchange the simple and affectionate piety with which, perhaps they entered the wilderness, for some form of visionary religion.[5] To maintain, unbent, the rectitude of sound reason, and unsullied, the propriety of sound feelings, in solitude, is an achievement, which, it may confidently be affirmed, surpasses the powers of human nature. Good sense, never the product of a single mind, is the fruit of intercourse and collision.

When the several circumstances above mentioned are duly considered, they will remove from candid minds almost every sensation of asperity or of contemptuous reprobation, towards those who, in their day of defective knowledge, became the victims, or even the zealous supporters of the prevalent enthusiasm. We have done, then, with the parties in these scenes of delusion and folly; or at least with those of them who were sincere in their error. But when we turn to the system itself, and gain that license which charity herself may grant, while an abstraction only is under contemplation, we must remember that this monkery, so innocent in its commencement, and so plausible in its progress, was the chief means of destroying the spiritual reality of Christianity, and ought to be deemed the principle cause of that gross darkness which hung over the church during more than a thousand years.

SECTION IX.
THE SAME SUBJECT.—INGREDIENTS OF THE ANCIENT MONACHISM.

Among the principal elements of the ancient Monachism, it is natural to name, first—

Its contempt of the divine constitution of human nature, and the outrage it offered to the most salutary instincts.

It may be difficult to determine which is the greater folly and impiety, that of the Atheist, who can contemplate the admirable mechanism of the body, and not see there the proofs of divine wisdom and benevolence; or that of the Enthusiast, who, seeing and acknowledging the hand of God in the mechanism of the human frame, yet dares to institute, and to recommend, modes of life which do violence to the manifest intentions of the Creator, as therein displayed; and, moreover, is not afraid to assert a warrant from Heaven for such outrages; as if the Creator and Governor of the world were not one and the same Being;—one in counsel and purpose: or as if the Author of Christianity were at variance with the Author of nature! Yet this preposterous error, this virtual Manichæism, has seemed to belong naturally to every attempt to stretch and exaggerate the precepts of the Gospel beyond their obvious sense; and indeed has seldom failed to show itself in seasons of unusual religious excitement.

Christianity is a religion neither for angels nor for ghosts; but for man, as God made him. Nevertheless, in revealing an endless existence, and in establishing the paramount claims of the future world, it has placed every interest of the present transient life under a comparison of immense disparity; so that it is true—true to a demonstration, that a man ought to "hate his own life" if the love of it puts his welfare for immortality in jeopardy. Unquestionably, if by such means the well-being of the imperishable spirit could be secured and promoted, it would highly become a wise man to pass the residue of life, though it should hold out half a century, upon the summit of a column, exposed, like a bronze, to the alternations of day and night, of summer and winter; or to stand speechless and fixed, with the arms extended, until the joints should stiffen, and the tongue forget its office; or to inhabit a tomb, or to hang suspended in the air by a hook in the side: these, and if there be any other practices still more horrifying to humanity, were doubtless wise, if, in the use of them, the soul might be advantaged; for the soul is of infinitely greater value than the body.

And much more might it be deemed lawful and commendable to refrain from matrimony, to withdraw from human society, to be clad in sackcloth, to inhabit a cavern, if such comparatively moderate abstinences and mortifications were found to promote virtue, and so to ensure an enhancement of the bliss that never ends. Conduct of this sort, however painful it may be, is perfectly in harmony with the principle universally admitted to be reasonable, and in fact very commonly reduced to practice, namely, to endure a smaller immediate loss or inconvenience, for the sake of securing greater future good.

The dictates of self-interest every day prompt sacrifices of this kind; and the maxims of natural virtue go much further, and often require a man to make the greatest deposit possible, even when the future advantage is doubtful, and when it is not the sufferer who is to reap the expected benefit! On this principle the soldier places himself at the cannon's mouth, because the safety or future welfare of his country can be purchased at no other price. On this principle a pious son denies the wishes of his heart, and remains unmarried, that he may sustain a helpless parent. Christianity is not therefore at all peculiar in asserting the claims of higher, over lower reasons of conduct, in peculiar circumstances, or in demanding that, on special occasions, the enjoyments of life, and life itself, should be held cheap, or abandoned.

Our Lord and his ministers explicitly enjoined such sacrifices, whenever the interests of the present and of the future life came in competition: and themselves set the example of the self-denial which they recommended. Nothing can be more clear than the rule of bodily sacrifice maintained and exemplified in the New Testament; and this rule is in perfect accordance with the dictates of good sense, and with the common practice of mankind. Fasting, celibacy, martyrdom, and such like contrarieties to the "will of the flesh," stand all on the same ground in the system of Christian morals: they are ills which a wise and pious man will cheerfully endure whenever he is so placed that they cannot be avoided without damage or hazard to the soul, or to the souls of others. But when no such alternative is presented, then the voluntary infliction becomes, as well in religious as in secular affairs, a folly, an impiety, and often a crime. To die without necessity, or to inflict one's self without reason, is not only an absurdity; but a sin.

And how immensely is this folly and immorality aggravated, when it is found that the voluntary suffering, instead of being simply useless, becomes, in its consequences, highly pernicious; and when, by abundant evidence, it is proved to generate the very worst corruptions and perversions to which human nature is liable! Such, clearly, are the inflictions of the monastic life—the solitude, the abstinence, the celibacy, the poverty!

The rule of Christian martyrdom is precise and unequivocal, and is such as absolutely to exclude every sort of spontaneous heroism. The motive also by which the Christian should be sustained, is of a heart-affecting, not of an exciting kind; and the style of the apostles when alluding to this subject, is singularly sedate and reserved; nor is an idea introduced of a kind to inflame fanatical ambition. The reason of this caution is obvious; for to have kindled the enthusiasm of martyrdom would have been to nullify the demonstration intended to be given to the world of the truth of Christianity. So long as martyrdom rested on the primitive basis (and it rested there, with few exceptions, until miraculous attestations had ceased to be afforded,) it yielded conclusive proof of the reality of the facts affirmed by the confessors. That is to say, so long as Christians suffered only when suffering could be avoided in no other way than by denying their profession; and so long as they endured tortures, and met death, in a spirit not raised above a calm courage; or even displayed timidity or reluctance, such sufferings afforded direct demonstration of the sincerity of their belief; and they, having been eye-witnesses of supernatural interpositions, and being often the very agents of miraculous power, their sincere belief, and their honesty, carried with it the proof of the facts so attested.

But when, at a later time, martyrdom was courted in a spirit of false heroism, and came to be endured in a corresponding style of enthusiastic excitement, it lost almost the whole of its value as a proof of the truth of Christianity. For it is well known to be within the compass of human nature to endure, unmoved and exultingly, the most extreme torments in fanatical adherence to a religious tenet: but such sufferings evince nothing more than the firmness or the infatuation of the victim. On the contrary, when the confessor has fallen into the hands of persecuting power by no imprudence or temerity of his own, and when he avails himself, with promptitude and calmness, of every legal and honorable means of self-defence or escape, and when he pleads truth and right in arrest of judgment, and at last yields to the stroke because nothing could avert it but the forfeiture of conscience, then it is manifest that a deliberate conviction is the real motive of his conduct: and then also, if he have had a personal knowledge of the facts, for affirming which he dies, his death, on the surest principles of evidence, must be accepted as containing incontestible proof of those facts.

The recluses were not the first to spoil the primitive practice of martyrdom; but their principles greatly cherished the abuse when once it had been introduced; and still more did their conduct and their writings enhance the pernicious superstitions which presently afterwards resulted from the foolish respect paid to the tombs and relics of confessors. These trivial and idolatrous reverences of human heroism can find no room of entrance until the great realities of Christianity have been forgotten; and until the humbling and peace-giving doctrine of atonement has been lost sight of. The contrite heart, made glad by the assurance of pardon through the merit of him who alone has merit supererogatory, neither admits sentiments of vain glory for itself, nor is prone to yield excessive worship to the deeds of others.

It deserves particular notice that the martyrs of the Reformation in England, France, Spain, and Italy, with very few exceptions, suffered in a spirit incomparably more sedate, and more nearly allied to that displayed and recommended by the apostles, than did the Christians, generally, of the third century. The reason of the difference is not obscure; these modern confessors understood the capital doctrine of Christianity much more fully and clearly than did those of the age of Origen.

Celibacy, though it may seem to be a kind of self-devotion less extreme than voluntary martyrdom, was in fact a much greater, and a much worse outrage upon human nature. This fundamental article of the monkish system had evidently two distinct motives: the first, and probably the originating cause of so extraordinary a practice, was the impracticability of uniting the pleasures of seclusion and of lazy meditation, with the duties and burdens of domestic life. The alternative was unavoidable, either to renounce the happiness and the cares of husband and father, or the spiritual luxuries of supine contemplation. The one species of enjoyment offered itself precisely as the price that must be paid for obtaining the other.[6]

The second motive of monkish celibacy, and which so gained ascendency over the first as to keep it almost wholly out of sight, sprung more immediately from the centre illusion of the system; and the real nature of that illusion stands forward in this instance in a distinct and tangible form. The very germ of that transmuted piety, which, in the end, banished true religion from the church, may readily be brought under inspection by tracing the natural history of the sentiment that attributes sanctity to single life.

For reasons that are obvious and highly important, a sentiment of pudicity, which can never be thrown aside without reducing man to the level—nay, below the level of the brutes, belongs to the primary link of the social system. But this feeling, necessary as it is to the purity and the dignity of social life, suggests, by a close and easy affinity of ideas, the supposition of guilt as belonging to indulgence; and then the correlative supposition of innocence, or of holiness, as belonging to continence. Nevertheless, feelings of this sort, when analyzed, will be found to have their seat in the imagination exclusively, and only by accident to implicate the moral sense. They belong to that class of natural illusions, which, in the combination of the various and discordant ingredients of human nature, serve to amalgamate what would otherwise be utterly incompatible. Among all the natural illusions, or, as they might be termed, the pseudo-moral sentiments, there is not one which so nearly resembles the genuine sense of right and wrong as this, or one that is so intimately blended with them.

It is easy then to perceive the process by which infirm minds passed into the error of attributing sanctity to celibacy. But the law of Christian purity knows of no such confusion of ideas. The very same authority which forbids adultery, enjoins marriage; and so long as morality is understood to consist in obedience to the declared will of God, it can never be imagined that a man is defiled by living in matrimony, any more than by "eating with unwashen hands." But when once religion has passed into the imagination, and when the sentiments which have their seat in that faculty have become predominant, so as to crush or enfeeble those that belong to conscience, then is it inevitable that the true purity which consists in "keeping the commandments," should be supplanted by that artificial holiness which is a mere refinement upon natural instincts. Under the influence of false notions of this sort, nothing seems so saintly as for a man to shrink horrifically from the touch of woman; nothing scarcely so spiritually degrading as to be a husband and a father.[7] Impious and mad enthusiasm! and not only irreligious and absurd, but pestilent also; for this same monkish doctrine of the merit of virginity stands convicted, on abundant evidence, of having transplanted the worst vices of polytheistic Greece into the very sanctuaries of religion; and so, of infecting the nations of modern Europe with crimes which, had they not been kept alive in monasteries, Christianity would long ago have banished from the earth.

How little did the pious men, who, in the third century, extolled the merit of mortification, and petty torture, and celibacy, think of the hideous corruptions in which these practices were to terminate! A sagacity more than human was needed to foresee the end from the beginning. But, with the experience of past ages before us, we may well learn to distrust every specious attempt to exaggerate morality, or to attach ideas of blame to things innocent or indifferent. This over-doing of virtue never fails to divert the mind from what is substantially good, and is moreover the almost invariable symptom of a transmuted or fictitious pietism.

II. The ancient monkery was a system of the most deliberate selfishness. That solicitude for the preservation of individual interests which forms the basis of the human constitution, is so broken up and counteracted by the claims and pleasures of domestic life, that, though the principle remains, its manifestations are suppressed, and its predominance effectually prevented, except in some few tempers peculiarly unsocial. But the anchoret is a selfist by his very profession; and, like the sensualist, though his taste is of another kind, he pursues his personal gratifications, reckless of the welfare of others. His own advantage or delight, or, to use his favorite phrase—"the good of his soul," is the sovereign object of his cares. His meditations, even if they embrace the compass of heaven, come round, ever and again, to find their ultimate issue in his own bosom; but can that be true wisdom which just ends at the point whence it started? True wisdom is a progressive principle. In abjuring the use of the active faculties, in reducing himself, by the spell of vows, to a condition of physical and moral annihilation, the insulated being says to his fellows, concerning whatever might otherwise have been converted to their benefit—"It is corban;" thus making void the law of love to our neighbor, by a pretended intensity of love to God.

That so monstrous an immorality should have dared to call itself by the name of sanctity, and should have done so too in front of Christianity, is indeed amazing; and could never have happened if Christianity had not first been shorn of its life-giving warmth, as the sun is deprived of its power of heat when we ascend into the rarity of upper space. The tendency of a taste for imaginative indulgences to petrify the heart has been already adverted to; and it receives a signal illustration in the monkish life; especially in its more perfect form of absolute separation from the society of man. The anchoret was a disjoined particle, frozen deep into the mass of his own selfishness, and there imbedded below the touch of every human sympathy. This sort of meditative insulation is the ultimate and natural issue of enthusiastic piety; and it may be met with even in our own times among those who have no inclination to run away from the comforts of common life.

III. Spiritual pride, the most repulsive of the religious vices, was both a main cause, and a principal effect of the ancient monachism.

The particular manner in which this odious pride sprung up in the monastery deserves attention. That sort of plain and practical religion which adapts itself to the circumstances of common life—the religion taught by the apostles, a religion of love, sobriety, temperance, justice, fit for the use of master and servant, of husband and wife, of parent and child, by no means satisfied the wishes of those who sought in Christianity a delicious dream of unearthly excitements. It was therefore indispensable to imagine a new style of religion; and hence arose the doctrine so warmly and incessantly advanced by the early favorers of monkery, that our Lord and his apostles taught a two-fold piety, and recognized an upper and an under class in the church, and sanctioned the division of the Christian body into what might be termed a plebeian, and a patrician order.

This doctrine appears more or less distinctly in every one of the fathers who at all favors the monastic life. It may seem to bear analogy to the principle of the Grecian philosophers who had their common maxims for the vulgar, and their hidden instructions for the few. But the resemblance is more apparent than real: the distinction arose among the Christians from altogether another source. The church, that is to say the collective body of true believers, is called in the New Testament the spouse of Christ; but the monks perverted the figure by using it distinctively, by calling individual Christians "the brides of Christ," and by appropriating the honor to those who had taken the vow of celibacy.

The most absurd and impious abuses of language presently followed from this error, and such as it were even blasphemous to repeat. Yet some of the greatest writers of the times are charmed with these irreligious conceits.

In accordance with this arrogant pretension, it was believed, that, while the Christian commonalty might be left to wallow in the affairs of common life—in business, matrimony, and such-like impurities—the "elect of Christ" stood on a platform, high lifted above the grossness of secular engagements and earthly passions, and were, in their Lord's esteem, immensely more holy, and higher in rank, as candidates for the honors of the future life, than the mass of the faithful. When this supposition became generally adopted and assented to, out of the monastery as well as within it, the first and natural consequence was a great depreciation of the standard of morals among the people. If there were admitted to be two rates or degrees of virtue, there must be, of course, two laws or rules of life: whatever therefore in the Scriptures seemed to be strict, or pure, or elevated, was assigned to the upper code; while the lower took to itself only what wore an aspect of laxity and indulgence. Even an attempt on the part of secular Christians to make advances in holiness might be condemned as a species of presumption, or as an invasion of the proprieties of the saintly order. Heavenly-mindedness and purity of heart were chartered to the regulars—the monopolists of perfect grace. Alas, that the privileged should have availed themselves so moderately of their rights!

A second, and not less natural consequence of the same principle, was the formation, among the monks, either of an insufferable arrogance and self-complacency, or of a villanous hypocrisy—an hypocrisy which qualified those who sustained it to become the agents of every detestable knavery that might promote the ambitious machinations, or screen the debaucheries of the order.

If a reputation for superior sanctity be ever safe and serviceable to a Christian, it must be when his conduct and temper, even to the inmost privacies of domestic life, are open to indifferent observers;—not to the cringing servitors of a religious establishment, or to the holy man's hangers-on and accomplices, but to the children and the servants of a family;—the moral vision of a child is especially quick and clear. He who thus lives under the eye of witnesses not to be deceived, and not to be bribed, may actually demean himself the better for being reputed eminently good. Not so the man who inhabits a den or a cell, who is seen by the world only through a loop-hole; or who shows himself to an admiring crowd when, and where, and in what posture he pleases. To such a one, the praise of sanctity will most often be found inscribed, on its other side, with a license to crime. Under circumstances so blasting to the simple honesty and unaffected humility of true piety, almost the best that charity can imagine is, that the hooded saint deludes himself, more even than he deceives others.

Such are the natural and almost invariable consequences—in monasteries, or out of them, of every ambitious attempt to render religion a something too elevated and too pure to be brought into contact with the affairs of common life. The mere endeavor generates a pretension that can never be filled out by truth and reality; and the deficiency must be made up by delusion and deception; the one begetting arrogance, the other knavery.

IV. Greediness of the supernatural formed an essential characteristic of the ancient monachism.

The cares, and toils, and necessities, the refreshments and delights of common life, are the great teachers of common sense; nor can there be any effective school of sober reason where these are excluded. Whoever, either by elevation of rank, or by peculiarity of habits, lives far removed from this kind of tuition, rarely makes much proficiency in that excellent quality of the intellect. A man who has little or nothing to do with other men on terms of open and free equality, needs the native sense of five, to behave himself only with a fair average of propriety. Absolute solitude (and seclusion in its degree) necessitates a lapse into some species of absurdity more or less nearly allied to insanity; and religious solitude naturally strays into the regions of vision and miracle.[8]

The monastery was at once the place where the illusions of distempered brains were the most likely to abound, and where the frauds which naturally follow in the train of such illusions could the most conveniently be hatched and executed. Those dungeons of dimness, of silence, of absolute obedience; those scenes of nocturnal ceremony; those labyrinths of subterrene communication; those nurseries of craft and credulity, seemed as if constructed for the very purpose of fabricating miracles; and, in fact, if all the narratives of supernatural occurrences that are found upon the pages of the ancient church-writers were numbered, incomparably the larger proportion would appear to have been connected immediately with the religious houses. The wonder which goes to swell the vaunted achievements of the sainted abbot or brother, was effected, we are assured—in the cell, in the chapel or church, in the convent-garden, in the depths of the overhanging forest, or upon the solitude of the neighboring shore! Of all such miracles it is enough to say, that whether genuine or not, they can claim no respect from posterity, seeing that they stand not within the circle of credible testimony. History—lover of simplicity—scorns to place them on her page in any other form than as evidences of the credulity, if not of the dishonesty of the times!

Many laborious and voluminous discussions might have been saved, if the simple and very reasonable rule had been adopted of waiving investigation into the credibility of any narrative of supernatural or pretended supernatural events, said to have taken place upon consecrated ground, or under sacred roofs. Fanes, caves, groves, churches, convents, cells, are places in which the lover of history will make but a transient stay: and he may easily find better employment than in sifting the evidence on which rest such stories as that of the roof-descended oil, used at the baptism of Clovis; or that of the relics discovered by Ambrose for the confutation of royal error, and a thousand others of like nature. Those who, reading church history cursorily, are perplexed by the frequency of suspicious miracle, are probably not aware, generally, how very large a proportion of all such annoying relations may be readily and reasonably disposed of by adhering to the rule above stated.

The miraculous powers existing in the church after the apostolic age, rest under a cloud that is not now to be thoroughly dispelled. But with safety the following propositions may be affirmed: first, That the Christian doctrine probably received some miraculous attestations after the death of the apostles; secondly, That so early as the commencement of the fourth century, fraudulent or deceptive pretensions to miraculous power were very frequently advanced; and lastly, That at that period, and subsequently, there are instances, not a few, of a certain sort of sincerity and fervor in religion, conjoined with very exceptionable attempts to acquire a thaumaturgal reputation. These deplorable cases deserve particular attention, especially as they show what are the natural fruits of fictitious pietism.

If we choose to read the church history of the early centuries in the spirit of frigid scepticism, all the toil and perplexity that belong to the exercise of cautious and candid discrimination will be at once saved; and we shall, in every instance, where supernatural interposition is alleged, and whatever may be the quality of the evidence, or the character of the facts, take up that obvious explanation which is offered, by attributing a greedy credulity to the laity of those times, and a villanous and shameless knavery to the clergy. But this short method, how satisfactory soever it may be to indolence, or how gratifying soever to malignity, can never approve itself to those who are at once well informed of facts, and accustomed to analyze evidence with precision. The compass of human nature includes many motives, deep, and intricate, of which infidelity never dreams, and which, in its unobservant arrogance, it can never comprehend.

Long before the time when ecclesiastical narratives of supernatural occurrences assume a character decidedly suspicious, or manifestly faithless, the great facts of Christianity had, with a large class of persons, and especially with the recluses, become the objects of day-dream contemplation, and formed rather the furniture of a theatre of celestial machinery, than the exciting causes of simple faith, and hope, and joy. The divine glories, the brightness of the future life, the history and advocacy of the Mediator, the agency of angels, and of demons, were little else, to many, than the incentives of intellectual intoxication. When once this misuse of religious ideas had gained possession of the mind, it brought with it an irresistible prurience, asking for the marvellous, just as voluptuousness asks for the aliments of pleasure. This demand will be peculiarly importunate among those who have to uphold their faith in the front of a gainsaying world; and who would much rather confound the scoffer by the blaze of a new miracle, than convince him by an argumentative appeal to an old one.

The first step towards the pseudo-miraculous is taken without doing any violence to conscience, and little even to good sense; provided that opinions of a favoring kind are generally prevalent. Good, and even judicious men, might be so under the influence of the imagination as to have their sleep hurried with visions, and their waking meditations quickened by unearthly voices; and might complacently report such celestial favors to greedy hearers, without a particle of dishonest consciousness.[9] Thus the taste for things extraordinary was at once cherished and powerfully sanctioned by the example of men eminently wise and holy. Then, with an inferior class of men, the progression from illusions, real and complete, to such as were in part aided by a little spontaneity and contrivance, and which, though somewhat unsatisfactory to the narrator, were devoured without scruple by the hearer, could not be difficult. The temptation to produce a commodity so much in demand was strong; often too strong for those whose moral sense had been debilitated by an habitual inebriety of the imagination. Another step towards religious fraud was more easily taken than avoided, when it was eagerly looked for by open-mouthed credulity, and when the church might cheaply and securely be glorified, and Gentilism triumphantly confuted. The plain ground of Christian integrity having once been abandoned, the shocks of a downward progress towards the most reprehensible extreme of deception were not likely to awaken remorse.

Practices, therefore, which, viewed in their naked merits, must excite the detestation of every Christian mind, might insensibly gain ground among those who were far from deserving the designation of thorough knaves. They were fervent and laborious in their zeal to propagate Christianity; they believed it cordially, and themselves hoped for eternal life in their faith; and in the strength of this hope were ready "to give their bodies to be burned." They prayed, they watched, they fasted, and crucified the flesh, and did everything which an enthusiastical intensity of feeling could prompt; and this feeling prompted them to promote the gospel, as well by juggling as by preaching.

But had not these religious forgers read the unbending morality of the gospel? Or, reading it, was it possible that they could think the sacrifice of honesty an acceptable offering to the God of truth? The difficulty can be solved only by calculating duly the influence of imaginative pietism in paralyzing the conscience; and if the facts of the case still seem hard to comprehend, it will be necessary, for illustration, to recur to instances that may be furnished, alas! by most Christian communities in our own times. Is it impossible to find individuals fervent, and in a certain sense sincere, in their devotions, and zealous and liberal in their endeavors to diffuse Christianity, and, perhaps, in many respects amiable, who, nevertheless, admit into their habitual course of conduct very gross contrarieties to the plainest rules of Christian morality? When instances of this sort are under discussion, it is alike unsatisfactory to affirm of the parties in question, that they are, in the common sense of the term, hypocrites; or to grant that their piety is genuine, but defective. The first supposition, though it may cut the difficulty, does not by any means nicely accord with the facts: and the second puts contempt upon the most explicit and solemn declarations of our Lord and his ministers, whose style of enforcing the divine law will never allow those who are flagrantly vicious, those who are "workers of iniquity," to be called 'imperfect Christians.'

One alternative presents itself for the solution of the pressing difficulty. The religion of these delinquent professors is sincere in its kind, and perhaps fervent; but not less fictitious than sincere. Or rather the religion they profess is not Christianity, but an image of it. Whatever there is in the Gospel that may stimulate emotion without breaking up the conscience, has been admitted and felt; but the heart has not been made "alive towards God." Repentance has had no force, the desire of pardon no intensity. Certain vices may be shunned and reprobated, and others as freely indulged; for nothing is really inconsistent with the dreams of religious delusion—except only the waking energy of true virtue. And thus it was with many in the ancient church; the stupendous objects of the unseen world had kindled the imagination; and in harmony with this state of mind, a supernatural heroism and an unnatural style of virtue were admired and practised, because they fed the flames of a fictitious happiness, which compensated for the renunciation of the pleasures of sense. In this spirit martyrdom was courted, and deserts were peopled, until they ceased to be solitudes; and in this spirit also miracles were affirmed, or fabricated, not perhaps so often by knaves as by visionaries.

Tho subject of the suspicious pretensions to miraculous power advanced by many of the ancient Christian writers should not be dismissed without remarking, that it is one thing to compose a gaudy narrative (de virtutibus) of the wonder-working powers of a saint gone to his rest in the preceding century, and another to be the actor in scenes of religious juggling. If this distinction be duly considered, a very large mass of perplexing matter will at once be discharged from the page of ecclesiastical history, and that without doing the smallest violence either to charity, or to the laws of evidence. Some foolish presbyter, or busy monk, gifted with a talent of description, has collected the church tales current in his time, concerning a renowned father. The turgid biography, applauded in the monastery where it was produced, slipped away silently to the faithful of distant establishments, and without having ever undergone that ordeal of real and local publicity which authenticates common history, was suffused through Christendom, as it were, beneath the surface of notoriety, and so has come down to modern times to load the memory of some good man with unmerited disgrace.

V. The practice of mystifying the Scriptures must be named as an especial characteristic of monkish religion.

This practice was, in the first place, the natural fruit of a life like that of the recluses; for the Bible is a directory of common life; it is the heavenly enchiridion of those who are beset with the cares, labors, sorrows, and temptations of the world. To the anchoret it presents almost a blank page: a style of existence so unnatural as that which he has chosen, it does not recognize; his imaginary troubles, his frivolous duties, his visionary temptations, his self-inflicted sufferings, and his real difficulty of maintaining virtue under the galling friction of a presumptuous vow, are all absolutely unknown to the Scriptures, which therefore to the recluse, are not profitable for reproof, or correction, or for instruction in the false righteousness which he labors to establish.