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THE EXTENT OF THE ASCETIC INSTITUTE, AND THE SANCTION IT RECEIVED FROM THE NICENE CHURCH.

NOTHING is more monotonous than the story of monkish life, whether pagan, christian, or mahometan. This ignis fatuus of the ecclesiastical levels, find it in what climate we may; or, whether we look for it in our own times, or in the middle ages, or in the nicene age, or in the remotest periods of history, shows the same forms, and the same hue. Like the long trains of figures that adorn the passages of an egyptian temple, there is throughout, one costume, one physiognomy, one style of attitudes, one dull ground, and one or two crude colours.

It is surprising to find in how small a degree either the widest diversities of religious belief, or the most extensive differences of climate and national character, have modified this immemorial species of insanity. During the lapse of at least three thousand years, the principles, the aim, the practices, and even the visible and graphic characteristics of the ascetics, whether eremite or cœnobite, have remained nearly the same; or have varied only as a flower in the green-house may differ from its variety, afield. It is, in fact, just thus that the nicene monkery is to be distinguished from that of the nubian gymnosophists, and the indian brachmans, of the remotest antiquity. The high and close temperature of the Church, brought out richer colours and more leafage; and even, sometimes, we may allow, a better fruit; but the plant has always been the same.

The chagrin of the romish missionaries in finding, wherever buddhism had prevailed, the very counterpart of their own

hierarchichal and monastic system, was occasioned by the near resemblance, or rather identity of all institutes founded upon the ascetic principle-' The devil,' said they, 'has been at work here, spitefully mimicking the Church, for our special mortification.' These good and zealous men would have kept nearer, at once, to historical and to theological truth, in saying that what the crafty adversary had really done was to set the Church mimicking pagan delusions.

Madmen are said to be insensible to changes of temperature; for the mind, having come under the tyranny of some one idea, or single class of impressions, ceases to be conscious of whatever might divert it. Sultry heat and extreme frost are the same to the maniac; and thus too, and it is a highly curious fact, the ascetics of the torrid zone were not surpassed, as to contempt of the extremes of heat and cold, by the anchorets of the then frozen forests of Germany and Gaul, who would give up no point of their discipline-a discipline borrowed from Syria and Egypt, during the utmost severities of a northern winter. Should this fortitude be regarded as the mild constancy of christian courage, or as the iron insensibility of lunacy?

The burning solitudes of Upper Egypt,* and the craggy seclusions of Nubia, had, from time immemorial, been occupied by a race of troglodyte sages, whose successors of the nicene era adhered to the very same modes of life, and professed the very same abstract principles, differing only in the phrases they made use of, and in the circumstance of putting themselves in alliance with the Church. The Church, on her part, acknowledged them as her most illustrious and devoted sons, and made them the objects of her unmeasured admiration. India was however the cradle of the anchoretic life, and Buddhu the father of its doctrines; and in like manner as all christendom, during many centuries, was accustomed to look to Egypt and Nubia for its brightest patterns of holy abstraction and mortification, so did these refer to the banks of the Indus and the Ganges, as the sources of their doctrine and practice.

The excavated rocks which, in earlier times, had been tenanted by robbers, or by outlaws, and afterwards by the coiners of base money, (Jerom. Vita S. Paul.) afforded sepulchral shelter to the christian ascetics.

*

Strabo, Arrian,† Diodorus Siculus, Porphyry,§ Lucian,|| as well as several of the fathers, especially Clement of Alexandria,¶ and Augustine,** have handed down incidental notices of the philosophy and manners of the indian and egyptian gymnosophists, such as are amply sufficient for the purpose of identifying the ancient, and the more recent-the buddhist, and the christian ascetic institute, These professors of a divine philosophy, like their christian imitators, went nearly naked; they occupied caverns or chinks in the rocks; they abstained entirely from animal food; they professed inviolable virginity; they prac tised penance; they passed the greater part of their time in mute meditation; they imposed silence and absolute submission upon their disciples; they professed the doctrine that the perfection of human nature consists in an annihilation of the passions, and of every affection which nature has implanted, whether in the animal or the mental constitution: abnegation was, with them, the one point of wisdom and virtue; and a reabsorption of the human soul into the abyss of the divine mind, was the happy end of the present system, to the pure and wise.

Now one might reasonably have supposed that a system of doctrine and practice such as this, if it were to come at all under the powerful influence of christianity, must have admitted some extensive modifications: but it was not so in fact:-a few phrases and another dialect, or slang, adopted, make almost all the difference which serves to distinguish the ancient gymnosophist, from the christian anchoret of the nicene age. If we are to confide in those highly encomiastic descriptions of these latter, which adorn the pages of the christian writers of that era, the one institute was a close imitation of the other. The extant information bearing on this subject, is not scanty, and it is furnished, explicitly, or is

* Strabo, lib. xv.

† Arrian, Exped. Alex. lib. vii. c. 1; and Hist. Ind. c. 11.

Diod. lib. ii,

§ Porph. de Abstinent. lib. iv.

Lucian, Fugitivi.

¶ Clemens, Strom. lib. i. and iii.

**

August. Civ. Dei, lib. xiv. c. 17; and lib. xv. c. 20.

†† Non enim est hoc bonum, nisi cum fit secundum fidem summi boni, qui est Deus.

Civ. Dei.

incidentally confirmed, by Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen,* Theodoret, Athanasius, Palladius, Sulpitius Severus, Cassian, Jerome, Chrysostom, Basil, Augustine, Isidore, Ephrem; some of whom furnish the minutest details of the seraphic life,' and all speak of it in terms of wonder and admiration.

The more rigid and heroic of the christian anchorets dispensed with all clothing except a rug, or a few palm-leaves round the loins. Most of them abstained from the use of water for ablurtion ; nor did they usually wash or change the garments they had once put on; thus St. Antony bequeathed to Athanasius a skin in which his sacred person had been wrapped for half a century. They also allowed their beards and nails to grow, and sometimes became so hirsute, as to be actually mistaken for hyænas or bears.§ It need not be said that celibacy was the first law of this institute, and that an abstinence the most rigid was its second law. Many, having scooped narrow cells in the crevices of precipitous rocks, built themselves in, leaving only a small aperture, and then depended entirely upon the piety of their disciples, or admirers, for supplying their daily wants. Of many it is affirmed that they had passed fifty years without exchanging a word with a human creature. Some inflicted upon themselves the tortures of perpetual ulceration.

Egypt seems to have been the centre of asceticism in its most terrible form; and it was therefore toward Egypt that the nicene writers directed the eyes of the Church, as to the high school of sacred wisdom. In Syria, in Arabia, and in the mountainous

Perhaps there is nowhere to be found a less exceptionable statement of the nature and purport of the monastic life than the one given by Sozomen, lib. i. c. 12. He subjoins also a reasonable history of the origin of the institution; but let the reader go on to the history of the monk Ammon! † Jerom. Vita S. Paul.

It is idle to think of cleanliness in a hair-cloth!' Jerom. Vita Hilarion. *Η νιψάμενος καν τοὺς πόδας ὕδατι. Athan. Vita S. Ant. p. 504.

§ Palladius reports several instances of this kind: it is superfluous to cite passages in reference to facts which have been so often stated, and which no one calls in question. The only circumstance important to our argument is this, that the extravagances often spoken of as attaching to the more recent monkery took their pattern from the ascetics of the nicene age; and of this no one can entertain a doubt who reads Jerome, Cassian, Athanasius, Sulpitius, Palladius, and Socrates.

regions of Asia Minor, especially in Pisidia and Cappadocia, a somewhat mitigated rule of the solitary and monastic life appears to have prevailed; the hermits building huts, comparatively commodious, in the middle and higher regions of the mountains; and often choosing, like Basil, the most delicious spots for their abode ;* and admitting just so much relaxation of discipline, as might render this mode of life not altogether uninviting to those who, in embracing it, left behind them the racking anxieties, the wrongs, and the privations of common life. To many, celibacy and fasting were but a moderate price to pay for tranquillity, and an exemption from laborious courses, or dangerous services; especially if already the fervour of life was gone by, and if, as with many, appetite had been abated by disease, or early luxurious habits.

At what time, precisely, the wilderness exchanged its pagan for a christian tenantry, it is not easy to ascertain. In some instances, no doubt, the very individuals who had begun their course as heathen gymnosophists, ended it as christian anchorets. But oftener, probably, the deserted cell or cavern of the savage philosopher was taken possession of by one who, having, in the neighbouring cities, received some knowledge of the Gospel, betook himself to the angelic life in consequence of persecutions, or of disappointments in love or in business. This is certain, that many of these solitaries were well acquainted with the Scriptures, and must therefore have passed some years in christian society.†

The cœnobite institution reached its organized state in an irregular manner, and continued, to a late period, open to many anomalies. In frequent instances, those who professed virginity or continence, continued to reside with their friends, and in fact lived at large, using their profession as a general license, or ticket of liberty, exempting them from the restraints which the manners of the age and country, as well as the common sentiments of

*

:

Basil, a thorough enthusiast, as to the ascetic life, paints it in the brightest colours his epistles to Nazianzen might seduce any imaginative reader into the wilderness; if indeed he could find a wilderness such as Basil describes in a letter to his friend. Nazian. tom. i. p. 835.

†The writings of Ephrem may be referred to as a sample of the mode of instruction usual in the monasteries, and which, whatever may have been its defects, yet embodied copious citations of Scripture. Some of this writer's sermons are little more than strings of texts.