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MORAL QUALITY OF THE ASCETIC INSTITUTE, AS IT AFFECTED THE MONKS THEMSELVES.

THE evidence of history forgotten, and our better christian notions laid aside, it is then easy for an ardent and serious mind to follow the hermit into his wilderness, or the monk into his cloister, with a vivid sympathy. In fact, the real difficulty with persons of imaginative temperament is to repress that yearning of the soul for seclusion and meditation, which impels them to enter upon the same flowery path. There are those, and it is more than a very few, to whom the course of self-denial is-the continuing to live in the midst of the duties, the turmoil, and the enjoyments of common life; and to whom the course of self-indulgence would be that of dreaming existence away, in a cloister, or on the sunny side of a mountain, far remote from the haunts of man. He is the epicurean, who surrenders himself to the impulse of his personal tastes, without regard to duty, or to the welfare of others: now these tastes may be of a sensual kind, or they may be imaginative, or they may be intellectual, or they may be a mixture of all, and we may call them religious; but surely a wonderful mistake rests with those who, while they are giving an unbridled course to their particular inclinations as contemplatists or intellectualists, and are allowing the world to go its own way; yet speak disdainfully of the glutton, or of the voluptuous, as epicureans, and boastfully of themselves as selfdenying men! A poor proof of self-denial, surely, to wear a filthy hair shirt, and to wait until after sunset for one's breakfast, if in doing so a man pleases himself, and no one else! No voluptuary is so uniform or so thorough-going in selfpleasing, as the hermit, who, while he permits some charitable

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dupe to bring him his weekly rations of bread, makes it his glory never to see, to speak to, or to thank his benefactor.

The capital illusions of the anchoret being allowed for, then it is easy to believe that he may have had his virtues, of a certain sort, and his devotion too, and his high-wrought unearthliness but then no descriptions which we may meet with of the loftiness or of the deliciousness of the anchoretic or monastic life, ought for a moment to make us forget its inherent selfishness, and its direct contrariety to the spirit and precepts of the Gospel. The institute can never be proved to be abstractedly good, by any amount of this sort of incidental recommendation; and it is clear that whatever amount of such recommendations we may allow to have attached to the early ascetic life, attach much more decisively, and with fewer drawbacks, to the institute as we find it regulated in later times, and when it came under the care of the romish church.

To any then who would indignantly ask- What! do you make no account of the pure and holy lives of multitudes of the ancient solitaries?' We may reply-Yes, we make much of them, even after we have righted the balance by considering how much selfishness, and how much delusion, and how much absurdity, entered into the system. But then we ought to make still more account of what is at once more pure and holy, and far less open to suspicion, and oftener relieved by instances of learning and utility-I mean the monkery of modern times. As to any practical inference, drawn from the assumed sanctity of the ancient solitaries, in favour of the system, à fortiori might such an inference be made good in favour of the romish monastic orders. If then this haircloth epicureanism is to be restored among us, it would be idle to think that we could do better than follow the model of the Benedictines, or the Franciscans.*

It is however necessary to descend a little further toward particulars. With this view I will now offer some considerations, and adduce some evidence, tending to exhibit the moral quality

By all which I have ever read of the old, and have seen of the modern monks, I take the preference to be clearly due to the last, as having a more regular discipline, more good learning, and less superstition among them than the first.'-Middleton.

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of the ascetic institute according to its THEORY, and assuming it to have been what its authors intended, and as good in fact as some of its admirers represent it to have been. We must afterwards inquire what its moral influence was under its actual condition and under each of these heads we must advert, on the one hand, to the case of those who came within the enchanted circle; and on the other, to that of those who stood without it. I here substitute the phrase the ascetic institute-it being remembered that celibacy was the prime article of that institute; the more comprehensive term being employed, because it is not practicable so to analyze the moral result of the entire system as to be able to assign its precise amount of influence, in the general product, to the celibacy as distinguished from the abstinences, the mortifications, the seclusions, and the other observances of the monastic life.

The greatest possible advantage is given to the nicene asceticism by deriving our notions of its THEORY from the writings of Basil, inasmuch as this eminent man leaves out of his system many of those offensive enormities, which attached to it as practised in Egypt and Syria; and at the same time he includes many excellences and embellishments, which others did not allow.

Take this scheme of life then at the best, and supposing it exempt from all suspicion, it is, in its very idea, a moral suicide. The suicide violates the often quoted rule-non est injussu imperatoris, &c. by poison, or the sword, or the rope; the ascetic does so as effectually by his vow. Under colour of piety, the monastic system is a course of contumacy towards the government of God; or a wilful and captious rejection of the part assigned to a man, and the taking up, without leave, another part, in compliance with a fastidious, infirm, self-indulgent, or morose temper. It was a behaviour like that of a humoured and

By Theory I mean the system entire-contemplative and practical, as embodied in the Monastic Constitutions, and in Basil's ascetic treatises, and epistles. I have elsewhere referred to the doubt which has been thrown upon the ascetic writings of Basil. There is however no doubt that these pieces, had in Sozomen's time, been long circulated, and had borne Basil's name. They belong therefore to the period with which we have to do. Yet Sozomen does but advance a surmise. Lib. iii. c. 14.

fractious child, who will be very good, just so long as you allow him to please himself, and to sit sullen in a corner; but who breaks out into passion, the moment you attempt to control him. As the ascetic had set out with a total misapprehension of the spirit of christianity, and of the scheme of salvation, so did he fall into the most extreme error in regard to the very nature of virtue, which is not a celestial phantasy, that may be realized if a man is allowed to shape every thing about him to his mind; but a terrestrial excellence, consisting in an adherence to fixed principles, under external circumstances, of whatever kind, even the most disadvantageous. This is the turning point in the discrimination between real virtue and every sort of counterfeit, that it is-the acting uniformly, or with an invariable purpose, under and amidst all diversities, and those the most perplexing, of external circumstances; or, as we technically say-' temptations." 'I will be virtuous,' says the ascetic, if only you will let me chalk out my own path.' While those who alone deserve to be called virtuous, are confronting every species of difficulty, opposition, and seduction, upon the rugged common of the open world, the nice ascetic turns off upon a level gravel-walk, between two walls, and there, forsooth, he too will be virtuous!

An inquiry therefore concerning the moral quality of the ascetic scheme, according to its theory, might fairly be cut short by the previous exception.-There can be no virtue of a genuine sort, in a system of conduct which allows a man to evade whatever duties he happens to mislike. Among the many illusions which meet us on all sides in the nicene church, none therefore was more gross than that involved in the customary language of the admirers of the ascetic life, who spoke of it always as the highest style of virtue. Just as well point to a marble statue, whether it be of a Socrates, or of a Silenus, of a Diana, or of a Bacchus, and say, 'See what temperance is here embodied, what command of the passions, what unruffled fortitude, what angelic purity, what indifference to the pleasures and honours of the world! Not so, for these excellences are the qualities of a conscious voluntary agent, and can never be predicated of a block of marble. And so, it is not the ascetic, in his cell or cloister, who may justly be called temperate, pure, self-denying,

heavenly-minded; but rather the man who, surrounded by the ordinary inducements to act and feel otherwise, nevertheless holds control over the lusts and desires,' as well of the flesh, as of the mind.'

And what if, after thus incurring the guilt of moral suicide, and after running away, as he thinks, from all temptations, the monk is found, by his own confession, to have become the abject and conscience-smitten slave of heart-burning impurities !* A christian man, living in the midst of every social relation, and calmly going in and out among the occasions of common life, yet practically remembers that, his body is the temple of the Holy Ghost.' The ascetic, following implicitly the holy Basil's instructions, vows chastity; and in fact violates it every hour of his existence. He subscribes to Basil's rule never to speak to, to touch, or look upon a woman (unless by the most absolute necessity :) but shall we listen-no, we would not listen to the ascetic's own pitiable description of his conflicts with the adversary.' If there be any thing at all belonging to the moral nosology of human nature, which is at once horrible and loathsome, it is that idea of the ascetic agonies which we cannot but gather from incidental confessions abounding in the ascetic writings. Is then the monk's actual condition-physical and moral, a desirable one? and is his the choicest style of virtue-is he the chaste and virtuous man compared with the christian husband and father?

It is easier to allow there to have been a certain order of piety, than any kind of morality, among the ascetics. Let it be granted that to condemn the debilitated stomach to churn saliva from sunrise to sun-set, might possibly promote devotion, but assuredly, there is nothing in such a discipline which we can call morality. There is morality in speaking evil of no man,' but no morality in not speaking at all. There is morality in not eating more than is

. Ego.. sæpe choris intereram puellarum: pallebant ora jejuniis, et mens derideriis æstuabat... Jerom. ad Eustoch. 'Listen not,' says Ephrem, * to the enemy who whispers thee, οὐ δυνατὸν παύσασθαι τὴν πύρωσιν ἀπὸ σου, ἐὰν μὴ πληροφορήσῃς τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν σου, p. 161. Oxford. Expressions of similar import abound in the ascetic writings. It is impossible to doubt what was the real mental and physical condition of many of the ascetics, perhaps of most.

Const. Monas. c. 3.