themselves daily in 'godliness and virtue,' personal and relative, find that they have enough to do, without undertaking any such supererogatory labour as that of removing a heap of sand, in a sieve, from one side of the monastery garden to-day, only that they may have to return it by the like means to its former position to-morrow.

From the general tenor of the ascetic memoirs it appears clearly that almost the whole moral and spiritual energies of the soul were spent and exhausted upon the artificial part of the system of discipline; and indeed it is but too evident, that, with more than a few, the defence of the citadel of monastic virtue, consumed the entire forces of the mind and body. Is such a system then a wise and eligible one, and likely to promote morals and real virtue on broad ground? Even if we could believe that it did secure for the monk a higher place in heaven, the ascetic practice cost him nearly all his virtue on earth. By virtue, we ought to mean dpern, in the christian sense of the word, that is to say, a quality of actions, and of dispositions, and of habits, marked by vigour, animation, and productiveness. What is, or can be, the virtue of the inert, or of the imbecile, or of the frivolous, or of the abject? at the best it is only a languid semblance of the shining reality, like the dimmed, flickering image of the sun, reflected from a puddle: and such, generally speaking, was the virtue of the monks.

Let the reader, after perusing Basil's Monastic Constitutions, and these expounded or drawn into detail in Cassian's Institutes, imagine what would be the effect which such a system must produce upon his own conduct and sentiments. Consider the principal elements of this system :-beside the vow of celibacy, and the other rigorous rules and abstinences of the ascetic life, the monk was removed from the influence of every one of those motives which impart energy to the human mind; and he was at the same time brought under the influence of every motive which tends to break down its force, to dissipate its individual purposes, and to reduce it to a condition of hopeless degradation, and ineptitude.

Not content with forbidding him to marry, the ascetic Lycurgus sternly demanded of the monk, that, as far as possible, he should break connexion with his nearest relatives, and literally cease

thenceforward to know his parents, brethren, and sisters, according to the flesh! a measure this which, how severe soever, was found to be an indispensable condition of the conventual life, and necessary to the enforcement of obedience. Such was the first iron-hearted lesson of this schooling in celestial virtue! It is curious to contrast these atrocities of the system, with the actual fact, not merely that the monks, though estranged from their natural connexions were used to buzz from house to house, meddling with whatever they should have let alone; but that, whenever the opportunity presented itself, these holy persons, who had devoted their lives to celestial contemplations, pushed themselves into courts, and palaces, and halls of justice, and into the tents of military commanders, taking it upon themselves to overrule secular affairs of every kind with a high hand.* Thus it was that men who had renounced marriage, actually lived in shameless concubinage; and that those who had disowned their parents and nearest relatives, were the common mischief-makers in families; and that those who had proclaimed themselves the citizens of the heavenly country, undertook the administration of the world's affairs, and would be foremost in the control of fleets and armies !

It was the unalterable law of the monastic institute, that a monk should retain no personal property-scarcely his right in the filthy rug that covered his shoulders. The pecuniary consequences of this rule we have not now particularly to do with ; but it is easy to see in what way it would operate to animate the zeal of the chiefs, the bishops and abbots, who were the fundholders, in

* Voici une étrange contradiction de l'esprit humain. Les ministres de la religion, chez les premiers Romains, n'étant pas exclus des charges et de la société civile, s'embarrassèrent peu de ses affaires. Lorsque la religion chrétienne fut établie, les ecclésiastiques qui étaient plus séparés des affaires du monde, s'en mêlèrent avec modération : mais lorsque, dans la décadence de l'empire, les moines furent le seul clerge, ces gens, destinés par une profession plus particulière à fuir et à craindre les affaires, embrassèrent toutes les occasions qui purent leur y donner part; ils ne cessèrent de faire du bruit partout, et d'agiter ce monde qu'ils avaient quitté. Aucune affaire d'état, aucune paix, aucune guerre, aucune trève, aucune négotiation, aucun mariage ne se traita que par le ministère des moines; les conseils du prince en furent remplis, et les assemblées de la nation presque toutes composées.'-Montesquieu, Grand. des Rom. cap. 22.

trumpeting the delights and rewards of the monastic life. Vast wealth, by this very means, came under the control of spiritual persons. But we now think only of the monk individually. Manual labours were indeed a part of his daily discipline; but then this labour was the cheerless drudgery of a slave ;—a slave of the most abject class; for never could he improve his condition, by his exertions: toil was toil, without a motive. Often it was a task imposed simply as a proof and trial of implicit obedience: he was enjoined to dig, and to fill in-to carry, and to re-carry, to build and to pull down. Could the energy of virtue survive these vilifying exercises? Is a man found, in fact, to retain his dignity, as the image of God, or does he reserve to himself that individuality of purpose which is the very ground of his accountableness, when thus, or in any such way, he is trodden in the dust? The intelligible motives which ordinarily prompt men to exertion, afford also the fulcrum of all active virtue. Even those virtues of which there was so much talk in the nicene church, as for example, almsgiving, were rendered impracticable by the monastic rules. A monk who could never be master of an obolus, how could he practise that capital virtue, apart from which, according to the authorized doctrine of the Church itself, even virginity could not secure admission into heaven?

The demands of morality are not to be acquitted in single acts; nor are habitual duties to be transacted wholesale. The monk who, just as the reluctant miser makes his will, did all the charity of his life at one stroke, in resigning his estate to the Church or monastery, did none at all in the eye of reason or christianity ;christian almsgiving is the imparting, daily, or as occasions arise, to the needy, something which is a man's own, and which he might innocently retain to his proper use.

Inasmuch as genuine morality is the doing right when the doing wrong is possible, so, just in proportion as the personal independence and liberty of an agent is restricted, his sphere of moral excellence is narrowed. And here let it be noticed that, although you may impose many restraints upon a man's bodily or civil liberty, while yet you leave him in possession of that liberty of the soul without which he ceases to be accountable, and apart from which he can practise no real virtue-in proportion

as restraint touches the soul itself, and passes inward, from the visible behaviour, to the very centre of the moral nature, the man is deprived of that liberty whence virtue takes its commencement. Thus, a rigorous and over-anxious parent is sometimes seen to keep so stern an eye upon, not the conduct merely, but the inmost sentiments of a child-looking into his very soul, that the victim of this well-meant cruelty, while precluded perhaps from overt acts of disobedience, is also denied the possibility of becoming, in any genuine sense, good and virtuous. Now, in the monastic system, taking the theory of it from Basil, where it is to be found in its mildest form, not only was every part of the monk's exterior conduct, even to the most trivial circumstance of personal behaviour, prescribed, and compliance exacted under severe penalties; but an unreserved confession to the superior, or to his deputy, was enjoined; and not merely the confession of delinquencies in conduct, whether more or less important, but every faithlessness or failure of the spirit, and every wandering of the desires, was to be punctiliously exposed: and this discipline was to be carried up into the recesses of the soul, until the victim of it had surrendered the last wrecks of his moral nature, and had allowed the foot of his spiritual tyrant to trample upon the pitiful residue of those personal affections which make a man, a man. And this scheme of execrable despotism was glorified by all the heads and leaders of the nicene church, as a school of ' divine philosophy,' and as a high training of heavenly virtue!

Virtue !—the life blood of virtue, or the energy whence virtue might have sprung, was bled out of the monk, drop by drop; and then the needless severity of binding him, hand and foot, and of bandaging his eyes, and of gagging him, was exacted, and after all, the wretch, reduced to this syncope of the moral nature, was exhibited as a pattern of holiness, the ayaλua of all excellence, earthly and heavenly!

Such was the nicene monkery in its theory, and upon too many the theory took effect, in its utmost intensity of cruelty and horror; or in its sad efficacy to produce the apathy and vacuity of mind and heart of an idiot. But in fact, in the greater proportion of instances, every kind of irregularity and the grossest licentiousness came in to mitigate this theory in its operation,

and so to relieve the cold horrors of the monastery by swamping it with corruptions. A wretched state of any system truly is that in which the only relief that can be looked for from the pressure of tyranny, is what may slip in through the sewers and sluices of profligacy! So it was, precisely, in the nicene monasteries and convents. To look at them in the constitutions of the cappadocian bishop, is to feel amazement; but to look into them, through the remonstrant pages of Chrysostom, and Jerome, is to be filled with contempt.

As often as any fanatical renovator came into the management of these religious houses, a return was made toward the theory of the system, which taking effect upon the sincere and simple hearted, and reducing others to outward decorum, seemed to work wonders. Such a reform, just lasting out the life-time of its mover, quickly gave place to the ordinary state of things; leaving the institute to what may be well called its natural condition of mingled fanatical and puerile absurdity, of idiot-like inertness, and of shameless profligacy.

He must be a bold advocate who should undertake to show that such has not been the ordinary condition of the monkish institute, from age to age. Or if there are times in its history which might claim an exemption, certainly the period with which we have now to do was not such a time:—it was not, if we are to receive the report of the best qualified contemporary witnesses and especially if we may interpret, on ordinary principles, the incidental allusions, which these witnesses have let fall, to the state of things around them.

And why should we not deal in this rational manner with the materials in our hands? On what grounds do they claim to be handled with a credulous reverence? The canonical writings do not ask for any such indulgence; why then should the nicene? But to peruse them thus, is to convince oneself that the nicene monkery was altogether less deserving of respect than that of almost any other age. It would indeed be easy to 'get up' a representation which should seem to contradict this averment. Single homilies and treatises may be picked out of the mass, which would charm the uninitiated. But let the same method be applied to a later period, and we must acknowledge it to be