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.