upon the same symbolic metonymy, recur in every part of this prophecy. Does any one imagine that the flagitious woman who had debauched the earth with her fornications, and seduced kings, means nothing more than a personification of licentiousness, in the literal sense of the term? No such interpretation has ever been maintained by rational expositors :-the scarlet-clad woman, shameless, cruel, and arrogant, and the inveterate enemy of the saints, is an adulteress in the ecclesiastical and symbolic sense of the word; and whatever actual profligacy may always have attended idolatrous superstitions, it is not the profligacy, but the idolatry, that is mainly intended by the prophetic style. The correlative, or antithetic import then of the phrases by which the holy and antagonist company are designated the true and faithful,' the followers of the Lamb,' cannot be misunderstood. These wapbévo, who are they, but those that have refused to drink of the wine of her fornications, who had corrupted the nations? If these terms are to be understood in their literal sense, so must other terms with which they are connected, and then the endeavour to expound the book in any portion of it must be hopeless.

་

But if there were room to entertain, for a moment, the supposition of a literal meaning in this place, then one could not but look to its bearing upon the general tenor of church history, or the outline of facts connected with the extant records of the ascetic institute. Let us then assume with St. Bernard,* that, by this virgin company is actually meant the virgins of the Church,' who are to enjoy an honour which is not to be shared by those, however eminent-qui non sunt virgines, quamvis tamen sint Christi. In the first place then, such an interpretation excludes from the privileged quire several of the Apostles-probably all but one or two of them, and with them, very many of the holiest men and women of every age. As to the worthies of our own times the truly great and wise of the protestant churches, it is but a few of them that would not be excluded by this interpretation. On the other hand, what has been the general moral condition of those whom it must include? Assuredly it is with the broad characteristics of the communities or classes which it

* Vol. ii. p. 471.

*

designates, that prophecy has to do; now a man must be resolute indeed in his credulity who can actually look into the extant evidence, and still persuade himself that genuine purity of mind and manners, or that any eminent christian qualities have generally belonged to the monastic orders. Take this evidence whence we please, from Cyprian down to St. Bernard; or look no further than to the partial testimony, and the reluctant admissions of Chrysostom, and Jerome; and it will be impossible to doubt that, while a few were virtuous and sincere, and at the same time fanatical and extravagant, there prevailed among the many the worst kinds of immorality:-that is to say, either shameless vices, or a pravity of the heart that was at once pitiable and loathsome. And yet it is from the bosom of a community such as this, that the Lord (if this interpretation is adopted) selects his peculiar favourites! and of these (ecclesiastical) virgins it is declared that they were blameless,' and that nothing 'false' was found in their mouth! How miserably are any such designations contradicted by the ordinary characteristics of the ascetic records! Read the Lives of the Saints '-read the Lausiac history, and what presents itself on every page but the details of self-deception and knavery? What but a digested system of vain pretensions, and profitable frauds; or, in a word-LIES, either in the sense of delusions, or in the sense of wilful falsifications? Take the very choicest specimens of nicene monkery (to some of which I have already alluded) such for instance as the life of St. Antony, or that of St. Hilarion, by Jerome, or that of St. Martin of Tours, and then let any one who retains his hold of reason determine whether these narratives are distinguished most by the spirit of

Alas, my soul! well may I so exclaim, and repeat the lamentable cry, with the prophet, Alas, my soul! Our virginity has fallen into contempt:the veil that parted it off from matrimony is rent by impudent hands: the holy of holies is trodden under foot, and its grave and tremendous sanctities have become profane, and thrown open to all; and that which once was had in reverence, as far more excellent than matrimony, is now sunk so low, as that one should rather call the married blessed, than those who profess it... Nor is it the enemy that has effected all this; but the virgins themselves!'— Chrysostom, tom. i. p. 304. Such is the confession of the warmest admirer of the ascetic life—and such, if we may trust him, had it become in his times. Jerome's testimony to the same effect will be referred to hereafter.

holy simplicity, modesty, and TRUTH; or of wonder-loving extravagance, delusion, and LYING? I ask for a conscientious reply to this definite question. In taking instances such as these, we give the ascetic system the greatest advantage possible; that is to say, we leave untouched the heap of abominations, and we adduce the very brightest instances, from what is spoken of as the golden age' of the monastic system. Few protestants, surely, will be so courageous as first to adopt the literal interpretation of the passage in question, and then to appeal to church. history, and the monkish legends, in support of such an exposition! The real meaning of the phrases, surrounded as they are by symbolic language, drawn from the same analogy, and concerning which there can be no doubt, will not, I think, be questioned by any but those who can spare nothing that may give a seeming support to a groundless doctrine.

THE PREDICTED ASCETIC APOSTASY.

THERE remains however a passage, and it is a signal one, which demands to be adverted to in connexion with our present subject I mean Paul's prediction of the approaching apostasy." But here again we are met by that protestant habit of thinking, which has, in so many instances, impelled the anxious opponents of the papacy to attribute specifically to the romish church, what, in truth, belongs to it only in common with the eastern, and with the nicene church. Thus, for example, not a phrase occurs in this most remarkable prediction -a prediction announced as 'explicit,' not symbolical, which can, with any propriety, be applied to the papacy, as distinguished from the church catholic, eastern and western, of the nicene age: each characteristic of the 'apostasy' as here specified, must have been admitted to have had its accomplishment in the ecclesiastical system of the fourth century, even if no such despotism as that of Rome had after

• 1 Tim. iv.

wards come into existence. It is otherwise with the mystic and difficult prophecy recorded in the second epistle to the Thessalonians; this latter having a more determinate and hierarchical import, while the one now in question has a wider meaning, and has respect more to the moral characteristics of the predicted defection.

Let us only imagine that the church universal had been brought back to apostolic purity in the sixth, or the seventh century, and that thenceforward, and to the present time, it had retained its integrity; how should we, in that case, have applied this prediction? Without a doubt, to the ascetic doctrine, and to the monastic institute of the preceding four centuries. Each prophetic mark is actually found upon that system; nor is there any other christian system, or sect, or institute, in any age or country, that has borne them. The prophecy having been issued under this very condition of its being a literal description, we find it to have been literally realized within the Church, and to have presented itself, with singular uniformity as to its characteristics, in every section of the church: and this well-defined error is termed an APOSTASY, involving the church which harboured, sanctioned, and idolized it, in the most serious reprobation.

Those who choose to do so, may amuse their leisure with ingenious methods for evading the application of this remarkable prophecy; but no such subterfuges will satisfy unsophisticated minds, and it is to such that the prediction is immediately addressed. It is not a Daniel that is appealed to on this occasion; for there are no dark symbols to be interpreted, there is no mythos to be unfolded. The Spirit speaketh pnroe, as the Lord himself had done when he foretold the manner of his own death, and the time of his resurrection. Prophecy, when delivered in this style differs from history, only in the brevity of its descriptions, and in the mere circumstance of its having preceded the event. And if in such an instance a real ambiguity is found to attend the application of the prediction, our alternative must be either the conclusion in which infidelity would triumph, or the strange supposition that the Church was thus explicitly forewarned of a danger which it was not to encounter until the remotest period of its history.

But how stands the prediction when it comes to be placed by the side of the church history of the first five centuries?

The Spirit explicitly declares that, in the after seasons, i. e. in the times succeeding the era of the apostolical personal ministry, some, Tɩvès, shall apostatize from the faith-from the principles of christianity. Some-as if it were a portion of the Church, or certain churches, or certain individuals, and not the whole body. Now, although the entire Church, and especially as represented by its chiefs, did in fact share in the ascetic apostasy by approving it, it was specifically the error of a class, or brotherhood, every where existing indeed, yet no where embracing the community. It was otherwise in relation to the worshipping of images, and the praying to the saints, which were the errors of the Church at large; while the ascetic practice was the error of some, and the marks of apostasy here mentioned are peculiarly the characteristics of the anchorets and cœnobites, or the ascetics of the two classes, the solitary and the conventual.

The ellipsis of the third verse being supplied, as it must, by the word Kɛɛvóvτwv, or one of similar import, then the meaning will be that the body, or community, or sect, to which the prediction relates, will be distinguished by its insisting, in an absolute and invariable manner, and in relation to all who came within the circle of its authority, upon abstinence from matrimony, and from the ordinary indulgences of the appetite. Whatever diversities might be admitted in relation to other points of discipline within this apostate community, no exceptions could be allowed in regard to these two. The first law-and an iron law, of this predicted body should be the preservation of virginity; and its second law, equally binding upon all, although susceptible of diversities in the interpretation, was—a general and severe abstemiousness as to diet, and the most rigorous occasional fastings. So it should be that, after setting off every variable or incidental peculiarity attaching to this apostasy, in different times and communities, these two marks should always belong to it, namely, the enforcement, or the pretended enforcement (for hypocrisy was also to be a characteristic of the system) of celibacy, and of fasting. And we are directed to look, not around the Church, but within its pale, for the defection thus described.