fallacious. Suppose, for example, we take the De Imitatione Christi, and assume that the occupants of cloisters, generally, in the author's time were such as he himself was.-Let us first look into the caustic writings of the author of the Stultitiæ Laus, who assuredly will prove a safer guide to the historical inquirer.

There was indeed a Thomas à Kempis in the fifteenth century, and there were many kindred spirits dispersed among the monastic orders at the same time. There was a Macarius in the fourth century; and a seven thousand,' unknown to the world, but reserved by sovereign grace in an age of wild fanaticism, and wide spread profligacy-religious, and irreligious. Religious profligacy!-I mean the hardened licentiousness of men and women who, while making the loftiest pretensions, were living in the practice of the foulest vices; or to say the least and the best that can be said, were so living just within the pale of ostensible virtue, as to show that their heart was always wandering beyond it. There will be false members attached to the purest communities; but the plain import of Chrysostom's representations compels us to believe that, among the professors of asceticism in his times, the pure were the excepted few, while the shameless practices against which he inveighs characterized the conduct of the many. 'I do not speak of all,'* says the indignant, yet cautious preacher. What does this mean, but that he did speak of most, when he charged the monks and nuns with the most flagitious indecencies.

To such a pass have things come, now-a-days, that a christian man or woman had better be married than profess virginity.' Ah how much better, could but the nicene church have understood so simple a truth! Not understanding it, thousands, and tens of thousands of souls were driven on, till they had reached a condition more frightful than any other which an accountable being can occupy. The profligacy of the sensual and giddy herd of mankind has no such appalling aggravation attaching to it as that which attends the course of those whose intemperance has the blackness of hypocrisy, whose excesses are a sacrilege, who go into the temple of God with the language of devotion, every Chrysos. tom. i. p. 306.

*

syllable of which, coming from such lips, is a blasphemy; and who retire from the church to chambers of wantonness, clad in a garb which should scorch them. Multitudes, in an early season of religious fervour, were enticed into religious houses, where every better purpose was speedily overthrown by the most dangerous seductions, and where, deprived of the invigorating influence of common motives, and strenuous employments, and breathing the sweltering atmosphere of pseudo-spiritual excitements, they met with facilities they had not dreamed of, for gratifying the worst propensities.

Enthusiasts err on no point more grievously, than in the supposition that the many, among whom they may excite a momentary sympathetic extravagance, will continue to be as absurd as themselves, when left to the gravitation of their proper natures. Unhappily, the broad net which the ascetic enthusiasts cast over the waters of the Church, entangled multitudes who were susceptible of just so much of the crazy influence as to prevent their speedy return to the common world; but by no means of so much as might have enabled them to leave behind them its vices. -Mad enough to hold to their profession of celestial virtue, and yet sober enough to avail themselves coolly of every opportunity to belie it.

It is but the surface of a subject, such as the one now before us, that can, with any propriety, be touched in a publication which may fall into the hands of the young. Those who have read certain of the ascetic writers will grant that a due regard to the feelings of the general reader forbids my making such a use of my materials as would be the most conclusive. I cannot suppose that an ingenuous opponent would take advantage of the peculiar difficulty which attaches to the subject; or that, presuming upon the impracticability of fully opening the wound of the monastic system, he would scout the meagre evidence which I have actually adduced. A cheap triumph of this sort would be a perilous one. I will dismiss the subject then with one remark

Although debauched manners will not consist with genuine holiness of heart, they will very well consist with a highly-wrought sentimental sanctimoniousness;-for there is no real contrariety

between gross voluptuousness, and refined voluptuousness. Now this general fact being admitted, as it will be by all who know what human nature is, I request the reader, in the first place, to turn to the statements already made, pp. 169–172, concerning the imaginative sensitiveness, and the prurient pudicity with which Basil laboured to affect the female mind. Let us distinctly conceive of the moral and intellectual condition of young women fully surrendering themselves to this kind of influence, which led them to people their dressing-rooms with invisible admirers. Then let us turn, either to Basil's own intimations concerning the shameless profligacy that was often going on in the monastic houses; or still better, to Chrysostom's very explicit and astounding statements of the manners of the nuns in his time. How stands the case then? Basil had fomented a dangerous sentimentality which could have no other effect than that which we find actually to have resulted from it, namely—the loss of the last remains of feminine delicacy, and a grossness of conduct such as many of the unfortunates whom society has expelled, would blush to imitate-and in fact, would not imitate, even in the last stages of their degradation.

Yet such is the reach of inconsistency, when once religion and morals are unhinged, that these same women-these virgins! could issue from their quarters, and frequent church, and approach the 'tremendous altar,' and, as we are assured, could, with unblushing face, and while others blushed for them, admit there and at the very moment when the 'terrible mysteries,' were celebrating, the attentions of their monkish paramours !

Whatever may be the licentiousness prevailing in modern catholic countries, I believe that the decorum of public worship is rarely violated; and on the contrary, that an imposing solemnity, and deep abstraction, characterize, generally, the behaviour of those who attend mass. The scenes which Chrysostom speaks of as of ordinary occurrence at Antioch, and at Constantinople, would not, I think, be tolerated now in any church in Europe.

371

THE NECESSARY OPERATION OF AN ASCETIC INSTITUTE UPON THE MASS OF CHRISTIANS.

WHEREVER a system exists which is favourable to such a course, persons of fervent and moody religious temper will, notwithstanding the remonstrances of reason, and christian principles, and the reluctances of ordinary motives, betake themselves to the ascetic life; which, in truth, has many charms for the inert and feeble minded. And such persons will say 'We have counted the cost; we know what we are doing; and we think ourselves free to obey what we feel to be a holy impulse.' Let it be so; yet there is one part of this 'cost,' which such persons seldom or never take any account of, namely the cost to the community, which, as an inevitable consequence, attaches to the establishment, in a country, of the ascetic institute; I mean the cost to public morals. This serious consequence, although seldom adverted to, invariably attends the prevalence of such a system. A few words will be enough for explaining this connexion of cause and effect.

The motives of christianity are found to take effect in various degrees of intensity, upon any number of individuals, some admitting them to the full, while others seem scarcely sensible of their power. Yet still all—and especially those who occupy an intermediate ground, feel themselves to be liable abstractedly, to the entire force of these motives; and any one of these persons, even the lowest on the scale of religious feeling, may, at any time, admit their fullest energy, and may move onward to a higher position, without obstruction. So it will be if the natural order of things has not been disturbed and in such a state of

things the fervour and the attainments of the few, intermingled with the many, operate beneficially upon all.

But now, if, in such a community, any artificial line of demarcation is drawn around the few who are presumed to have made great attainments; and furthermore, if whatever is the most affecting in the christian system be assigned to these few, as their prerogative, then the many are at once mulct of their shares in what had before been common property, and so long as they entertain no hope or intention of forcing their way within the narrow circle of privilege, they actually sustain a privation of almost the whole of that influence which before had, in greater or less degrees, operated upon them for their benefit. The more this artificial distinction between the few and the many is abrupt, arbitrary, and difficult to be passed over, the more complete will be the consequent subtraction of spiritual warmth and light from the outer space.

Let nothing more be done in any society of christians, than to make a rule that whoever professes eminent seriousness should wear a hood, or a tassel to his cap; and at the same time let such a doctrine as this, be constantly inculcated-That the virtue and piety of the unhooded,' or the 'untasseled' commonalty, is always of an inferior quality; and let the custom prevail of never quoting the choicest passages of Scripture except as applicable to the liveried aristocracy-the silent but inevitable consequence of such a system, upon the minds of the many, must be the almost total withdrawment of all efficacious motives, and a general subsidence of moral feeling, such as (if the few really justify their high profession) leaves a vast interval between them and the many. In fact, there will soon be no middle and hopeful class; but only an alternative of rare sanctity—if it be sanctity indeed, and a wide waste of lifeless formality.

Such, in fact, from the first, has been the condition of every community in which the monastic system has prevailed; nor is it easy to follow the history of this institution, uniform as it is in its characteristics, without being impressed with the belief that th satanic craft has had to do with the contrivance of the ascetic institute. Christianity, wherever it actually took effect, produced a moral revolution so absolute and so amazing, as to show that,