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stancy could not be exerted; and therefore pious pcople contrived a method of voluntary martyrdom, and inflicted upon themselves as many pains and penalties as Pagan cruelty had invented. They left parents, wives, children, friends, families, and fortunes, they retired from the world, they obliged themselves to a single and solitary life, they allowed themselves no more food, raiment, and sleep, than would just keep body and soul together; and in these austerities, to do them justice, there was usually no dissimulation; all was performed in earnest. Several of them, as Theodorus and Symeon Stylites, when their mothers or sisters came to visit them, and earnestly begged admittance, would not be seen. When any of them quitted their retirement and returned to the world, they were considered as apostates, and men lost to goodness, but they might enter into the church.

At first they set at defiance all learning, as useless or pernicious, and imitated their father Antony, who was entirely illiterate. They spent their time in working with their hands, and in silence, prayer, and contemplation; but afterwards, when they were formed into societies, they betook themselves to study.

They dwelt apart, each in his hole, so that most of them kept sad company, and by this moping and evermusing life, they were prepared and qualified to dream dreams, and see visions, and to converse with angels and dæmons, and many miracles were said to be wrought by them, which found easy credit and reception in a credulous age.

The devils used often to appear to the monks in the figure of Ethiopian boys or men, and thence probably the painters learned to make the devil black.

Evagrius

66

things. Amongst several instances of solid virtue "and useful reflections, we find in it childish obser"vations, examples which it would be dangerous to "imitate, extravagant austerities, unreasonable ac "tions, and injudicious enterprises." Du Pin.

Palladius was a bishop, and had been a monk himself. He wrote the lives of the monks down to his own time, to A. D. 420. His book is called Historia Lausiaca; a work, says Fabricius, quod nemo leget sine summa admiratione studii incredibilis quo viri illi et femina tam enixe conati sunt austeritate vitæ celibis et solitaria, cultu durissimo, inedia ac jejuniis vix humanis, et abstinentia ab omnibus commodis vita, assequi sanctimoniam. Quamquam hanc in longe aliis rebus consistere, aliis peti alique, neque in solitudines esse relegandam, et cum conjugio et societate hominum neutiquam pugnare tum sacræ li

tera tum ratio sana et sanctorum hominum non solitariorum

conjugumque exempla, et Monachorum atque Eremitarum peccata testantur. Bibl. Gr, ix. 5.

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The Greek philosophers had a particular dress, and affected to appear rough, mean, and dirty, for which they were sometimes insulted in the streets by boys, and by the populace; and the Cynics, very prudently, were armed with a staff, to defend themselves from dogs and from the rabble. The Christian monks imitated the old philosophers in their garb and appearance, and many of them seemed, in the opinion of those who loved them not, to have inherited the rags, the pride, and the contentious spirit of the former.

Some of them, out of mortification, would not catch or kill the vermin which devoured them: in which they far surpassed the Jews, who only spared them upon the Sabbath day. Qui pediculum Subbato necat,

tam

tum reus est, quam qui camelum Sabbato necaret: says a

Rabbi

Ammon, the father of the Egyptian monks, in the days of his youth, being importuned by his relations to take a wife, married a young virgin, and on the wedding evening entertained her with a long harangue against the married state, and made her as fanatical as himself. The conclusion of which was, that they both eloped from their house; and fled to the desert, and there led a monastic life. Socrates iv. 23.

We may compare this with the metamorphosis of Hippomenes and Atalanta, who on their wedding day were turned into lions:

modo levia fulvæ

Colla juba velant: digiti curvantur in ungues :
Ex humeris armi fiunt: in pectora totum
Pondus abit: summæ cauda verruntur arena.
Iram vultus habet; pro verbis murmura reddunt
Pro thalamis célebrant silvas.

Ovid Met. x:

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However, the monks, even in the earliest times, were not all of them such wonderful examples of mortification, as we learn from an unexceptionable wit ness, who was a fast friend and patron of monkery, from Athanasius. Writing to Dracontius, a monk, who had been chosen a bishop, and wanted much to decline the office, he says, When you are a bishop, you may fast and drink no wine for we have known bishops who were fasters, and monks who were eaters; bishops who abstained from wine, and monks who drank it; bishops who wrought miracles, and monks who wrought none: many of the bishops have kept themselves even from matrimony, and monks have been the fathers of children. Epist. ad Dracont.

VOL. II.

B

Tillemont,

Tillemont, when he gives an account of this epistle, omits the passage we have cited; and Du Pin in his Bibliotheque hath inserted it. Each had his reasons.

Jerom exhorts Rusticus, a monk, to live in a monastery, rather than to be an hermit in a solitary place. He sets forth the inconveniencies and bad consequences of this way of life. An hermit, says he, becomes proud, thinks himself a man of importance, forgets what he is, eats what he will, sleeps as much as he thinks fit, stands in awe of no person, is oftener rambling in the streets than at home in his cell. Not that I blame a solitary life, but I would have men first learn their spiritual exercises in a monastery. Du

Pin.

They who have judged monasteries to be hurtful or useless, yet ever approved of universities, colleges, halls, schools, public libraries, hospitals, and places set apart for the relief of the miserable, the encouragement of literature, and the education of youth. Our Chelsea-college, as they say, was designed by King James I. for polemic divines; and then, with a very small and easy alteration, it was made a receptacle of maimed and disabled soldiers.

If the king's project had been put in execution, the house would probably have been an house of discord; and Peace be within thy walls, would have been a fruitless wish, and a prayer bestowed in vain upon it.Eo primum fine fundatum fuit (hoc Collegium) a Jacobo primo, ut illic Theologi alerentur, quorum officium esset, ut publice oppugnarent novas in Ecclesiæ hæreses. Act. Erudit. MDCCix. p. 114.

The Baleares, to teach their children the use of the sling, hung up their dinner, and did not let them eat it, till they had fetched it down with a stone. In like

manner,

manner, the fellows of this college were not to have been admitted to commons, till they had discovered a new heresy in the writings of some contemporary, and had confuted the doctrine and worried the author.

Constantine held in the highest veneration those who addicted themselves to divine philosophy, as it was called in those days, that is, to monkery; and the holy women who preserved a perpetual virginity, these he almost adored. So says Eusebius, who was carried away himself with the torrent, and over-valued this strange way of life. Vit. Const. iv. 26. 28. Demonst Ev. i. 8, 9. iii. p. 129. To some of these saints might have been applied what Tertullian says of the Roman god, Faunus Fatuus, Curari eum magis quam consecra→ ri decebat.

But of all the praisers of virginity, Jerom seems to have performed his part the best, who calls Eustochium the nun His lady, because she was the spouse of his Lord, and reminds the mother of this lady, that she had the honour to be God's mother-in-law, Socrus Dei. Epist. ad Eustoch. T. iv. P. 2. p. 27. et 36.

After all, since some of the ancient monks seem to have been pious, honest, well-meaning, and sensible men, a doubt will arise whether the writers of their lives have not sometimes misrepresented them, as using more rigour and self-maceration than they really exercised; and whether they have not ascribed to them some freaks and follies into which they never fell, as well as miracles which they never performed. The sayings and the actions of these solitary saints, collected by Tillemont, Fleury, and others, and inserted in various parts of their ecclesiastical histories, are sometimes noble and commendable, charitable, discreet, compassionate, and good natured, but oftener trifling,

B 2

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