connected with a social economy, is for what was at first incidental and liable to the guidance of occasions, to settle down into the fixed form of a regulated constitution, it was not long before the widows of the Church, numerous as they were, came to make a standing class, or permanent order, situated, as we may say, on one side of the hierarchical structure. In what way this class, with others similar, affected the bishop's power, as patron and fundholder, we shall presently see. Apart from this financial bearing of the widow-band, the appendage of a company of helpless women, might seem to add little that was enviable to episcopal grandeur;-but with it, the consequences were important. Give to any one nothing better than an irresponsible oversight of the poor, with power to levy for their maintenance, and you have made him a considerable personage in the state.

But the widow-band served, very early, as the ground for a more important and sightly structure ;- -as bundles of rushes, and sear sticks are used to be laid upon a bog to sustain better materials. Next came, and at a very early date, as we have already seen, the illustrious company of dedicated virgins-a body collateral to the hierarchy, and independent, at once, of the people, and of the inferior clergy, and yet (generally) subject to the bishop, through the means of the most influential among the presbyters. The regards of the people toward the widows, we cannot suppose to have been of a kind to involve much reverence; but their regards-the regards they were constantly taught to entertain toward the virgins, carried sentiments of awe and deference; and this credit they could lend, when it was needed, to him who, on particular occasions, might wish to borrow it. Thus was the hierarchical structure, even in times of suffering and depression, acquiring, not merely altitude, but a great breadth of base.

A little later, as it seems, the order of male virgins, or monks and eremites, encrusted itself about the Church; nor was it long before this body swelled to such a magnitude, and acquired so portentous an influence with the mass of the people, as to give it rather too much of independent consequence. Still, however, in the main, the monasteries, thickly sprinkled as they were over the surface of christian countries, constituted so many forts and

citadels of ecclesiastical power, under the command of the highest authorities, and altogether independent of the lower clergy and of the people. On several recorded occasions these sombre garrisons swarmed out, in thousands, to the terror of their opponents, and to the effective aid of their patrons. Can we then be amazed at the zeal of the church authorities, in promoting, as they did, the ascetic doctrine? are we at a loss in accounting for the fact, at first so strange, that men of the highest intelligence, men of learning and knowledge of the world, should so have vilified themselves as they did, by trumpeting monkish exploits, and by repeating with all gravity the most insufferable nonsense, tending to glorify the ascetic life in the eyes of a besotted populace? Nothing is more easily understood than this course of things. We should do the rulers of the nicene church a great injustice if we were to think them so simple as not to have understood what they were about, while assiduously employed in heaping up the materials, and in pouring in the cement, which, at length, rendered the ascetic institute the immovable buttress of church power. And yet we must not impute to them too much foresight in this instance; for it is not often given to men to sit down, deliberately to devise those schemes of power which are to be ripened in a long series of years. But when once a course of ambition has been opened before a body of men in power, then there are always found minds quick to discern and prompt in availing themselves of whatever presents itself as fit to promote their designs. The chiefs of the Church did not, in the first instance, plan the ascetic institute, as the most proper means for establishing a vast system of spiritual despotism; but asceticism offering itself to them just when every extrinsic aid was needed, it was eagerly seized upon, and industriously turned to the best account. If there were any planning in this instance, we must look beyond the circle of human agency for the designing party.

Still more caution is needed when we come to advance general statements concerning the influence of mercenary motives, with men professing to be actuated by the loftier principles of religion. What we need in such cases, is not merely candour, but a wise recollection of that confused condition of mind which so often

belongs to men of ordinary quality, who, while they think they intend only what is holy and honest, are tacitly governed by very inferior considerations. It is but few men who are in the habit of severely questioning themselves as to their real motives: and public men do so, perhaps, less often than others. Men may be pursuing a course, such as might have been dictated by the lust of wealth, without in fact being mercenary knaves; for there were in their view other and better motives, on which they kept their eye fixed, while their hands were busy in sweeping gold and silver, like usurers, into their bags.

Now, with these considerations before us, we need call no ill names, while we look to the financial bearing of the ascetic institute, upon the ancient church system; and especially upon the position of the ruling clergy.

The Church then, and it was its glory, had under its wing a very numerous body of pensioners;—that is to say, the poor, generally, and the many who had been reduced to want in times of persecution-the widows, as a distinct class, and the virgins also as a class; and all were to be provided for, in one mode or another; and the people, recognising the duty of making this provision, and knowing to how serious an extent the bishop was constantly responsible, could not leave him slenderly furnished with the necessary means. The church chest, whence also the clergy themselves drew their incomes, must be a deep one; and in fact it often enclosed enormous amounts in money, plate, jewels and costly apparel. The bishop's patronage therefore, and his power and consequence as steward of ample revenues, and as the guardian, often, of entire fortunes, came to be, at an early time, very great; and it is easy to see that this power and patronage were directly enhanced by every addition made to the permanent pensionary establishment. Cyprian then, was quite right in an economic sense (though perhaps he did not distinctly mean as much) when he said that the glory of Mother Church bore proportion to the numbers included in the quire of virgins. There is no mystery in all this: nothing is involved but the most ordinary connexion of cause and effect; and yet so obvious a bearing of the celibate institution upon the power and influence of the clergy has been very little regarded.

But then the church virgins were not merely a class to be maintained; for they were, or some of them, large contributors to the church chest. This fact, too, has been much less regarded than it deserves. Woman has a noble, as well as a warm heart, and when once she has admitted the influence of powerful and elevating motives, she gives after a princely sort yea 'all her living; whether it be two mites,' or lands and houses and thousands of gold and silver. Many noble ladies were among the earliest converts; and the Gospel continued to draw such into the Church; and these, as if they had been conscious of the blessings which the sex at large should at length owe to christianity, 'brought an offering,' like that of the eastern mages, to lay at their Saviour's feet. Are we then invidiously and coldly blaming this liberality? God forbid: whether always controlled by discretion, or not, it afforded a signal instance of the quality and power of Christ's doctrine.

In the earliest times, and while large sums were required for redeeming and maintaining sufferers for conscience' sake, these ample donations, or sequestrations, found a proper employment; and perhaps did not greatly exceed the real wants of the Church; but when, and at the same moment, the season of tranquillity had come, and the monastic system had assumed a regular form— when the ascetic enthusiasm being at its height, wealthy converts were taught to think that the noblest of all modes of employing the mammon of unrighteousness was to build and endow religious houses, what could happen but that the stewards and administrators of church funds, and generally all who drew their incomes from the common chest, should be exposed to a terrible temptation to make a trade of the holiest things? Much need not be said on so obvious a point. Whether the monasteries and convents which, chiefly in this very mode, sprung up so thickly over all the christian surface, in the fourth and fifth centuries, were financially independent of the neighbouring churches, or were placed under the bishop's immediate control, the general result would be the same. Vast wealth was continually flowing over, from the world to the Church. The religious body was every day gaining upon the secular body. The Church had made excavations, deep and wide, here and there, and everywhere;

and into these pits there was a constant drainage; and every commotion of the social system threw into them a new flood, charged with precious matters.

While therefore the Church presented to the eye of the people a broad front of eleemosynary demand—its poor, its widows, its confessors, its virgins, its monks, and the clergy themselves, and all to be supported by the people, it was in fact silently becoming the steward, under various conditions, of many entire private fortunes. But could such things happen without producing an effect upon the religious sentiments and manners of the men most nearly concerned? Can we believe it? or can we believe that the singular animation which marks the style of the nicene orators, when they are lauding the monastic life, received no heightening from the unconfessed influence of inferior motives?— Inferior and unworthy motives seem endowed with a sort of tact and sense of propriety, impelling them to skulk into the dark corners of men's minds, where, without making any noise, they may, with a soft finger, press the springs of action, or ease the moral machinery, just at the moment when such interpositions seem needed.

There can be no need to impugn the integrity of men whom, nevertheless, it were absurd not to think of as influenced by motives which it would be an insult loudly to attribute to them. In connexion with our immediate subject nothing more is requisite than to bear in mind the simple fact, that the ascetic institute did, as well in its earlier as in its later form, that is to say, as well in the middle of the third century, as at the end of the fourth, and onwards, very materially and very dangerously affect the pecuniary position of the clergy; and that, at length, it became the principal means of so enriching the Church as to make her the mistress of the world's affairs. It is then a delusion to cite seraphic hymns and glowing orations, concerning the 'angelic life,' and to forget the more homely import of the system.

But again the ascetic institute, or, to speak of it in the concrete, the companies of monks, nuns, and eremites, were bodies to be governed, and engines to be worked. The clergy, and especially the more eloquent members of the body, commended the