397

THE CONNEXION OF THE ASCETIC INSTITUTE WITH RITUAL NOTIONS AND PRACTICES.

SEVEN years ago, if undertaking to treat of the progress of opinions in the Church from the apostolic age to the period of the council of Nice, one should not have felt a moment's hesitation in roundly affirming the fact of the connexion which we are now to speak of; for what may be called the natural history of the sacramental superstition, appears too obvious to require formal proof, It has however become necessary to advance with more caution upon the ground which, till of late, might well enough have been surveyed at a glance.

There is, I believe, no controversy concerning the historical fact, that practices had been established, and that notions were prevalent, relating to the ritual parts of christianity, in the fourth century, of which we can discover no trace, in the apostolic age. No one pretends to affirm that Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Augustine, speak of baptism and the eucharist, precisely as Paul, and Peter, and John, had spoken of them. A difference then in this respect had arisen in the course of three hundred years; but this difference, say the modern advocates of church principles, was nothing more than the ripening, or natural expansion of certain rudiments, which the Apostles had mingled, silently yet designedly, with the christian institute. Discerning, or thinking that we discern these rudiments, even in the apostolic writings, we do well, it is said, to derive our own notions and practices from the mature, rather than from the crude era of their history. If what was done and taught by the nicene divines, in regard to the sacraments, was nothing more than what had been foreseen

and intended by the Apostles, our part is to consult the nicene, rather than the apostolic writings, on such points.

But let it be asked, under whose auspices had this gradual expansion of ritual notions and practices been effected? This question is surely a pertinent one; and the answer it must receive brings us at once to the alleged connexion between the ascetic institute (especially the clerical and monastic celibacy) and the sacramental doctrine and practice of the nicene age.

This doctrine and this practice were nothing else than what men, so placed as were the clergy of the ancient church, would inevitably move toward, and adopt. That an unmarried clergy, professing and admiring the wildest extravagances of the oriental asceticism, should have adhered, century after century, to the modesty, simplicity, and unobtrusive seriousness of the apostolic sacramental doctrine, would have been a miracle far more astounding than any of those to which the Church, even in St. Dunstan's time, pretended. Every principle of human nature forbids such an incongruity, nor is an example of the sort presented by history :it could not have been-it is not to be believed-it was not the fact. The nicene sacramental doctrine was just such as might beseem, and accord with, the ascetic feeling and condition of the clerical body. A conclusion so manifestly true might be left unargued, with dispassionate persons. But we will follow the subject into some of its elements.

The nicene sacramental doctrine and practice, had then a general connexion with the prevailing asceticism, and they had some special points of connexion also, which must be briefly stated.

Sobriety of judgment, and a tone of moderation and quietness, which belong to some men-a very few, by endowment of nature, can belong to a body of men, take them where you please, only as the consequence of circumstances, favouring the growth of such qualities of the mind and temper: and if the circumstances of a body of men are of a kind to generate the very opposite qualities, it is not the influence of the few who may be of sound temperament, that will avail to contravene the operation of inducements and excitements, tending to inflame the heart, and pervert the reason.

The apostolic injunction, that church officers should be married men, was more than a mere license, permitting what it might have been difficult to prevent; for it had a positive reason: and it was not simply a provision against the grievous abuses that attend clerical celibacy, but a security for the moderation, and mental sanity of those who were to be the leaders of opinion in the Church. On the one side, let us imagine, there is a body of men whose affections have been warmed and softened, and whose moral and religious notions have been corrected by a varied experience of, and an actual concernment with, the ordinary interests of life. On the other side there is a body that has been, by some violent excitement, thrown out of the common path, and whose sympathies have no natural objects; who have not been happy as other men, who have not shed tears as others; who, while chafing under a sense of privation and inferiority, have also arrogantly challenged for themselves peculiar honours ;-men who, by being compelled, until it has become a habit, to look at their own condition under vehement excitements, as from a forced position, have learned to look at every thing else in the same unnatural manner. Now to which of these bodies shall we refer any moral, political, or theological controversy? Even if a loftier style be found among the latter, will not soundness and sobriety of judgment be the prerogatives of the former? will not excess extravagance, severity, and practical absurdity, be the characteristics of the opinions of the latter? This we assume as unquestionable. Every man in his senses would make his appeal, in a cause of whatever kind, to the former, not to the latter.

On this very ground it has been determined, by express divine authority, that the rulers of the Church, if not all who may exercise their gifts in its service, shall be married men. But, from a very early time, and more and more so every year, onward to the nicene age, the clergy were striving to reverse this rule; and, in the fourth century, the temper and habits of the clerical body were entirely governed by the ascetic doctrine; and the majority were actually unmarried men.

At once then, and on every admitted principle of reason, as well as of scriptural authority, we must appeal from the judgment of

these unmarried ascetics-these unhumanized sophists, whose imaginations were habitually inflamed, whose animal system was deranged, whose notions were like themselves, harsh, acrid, malign, and who could neither think nor speak, but in hyperbole. From such men we will learn nothing-or nothing but a caution against folly and hypocrisy :-such lips are not wont to distil wisdom; nor will we seek it thence. There is then a prima facie case against the nicene divines, inasmuch as they were not husbands and fathers, as church rulers should have been.

Even in relation to the most abstracted point of theology, the judgment of a body of ascetics is sure to be perverted: much more so, if the question be of a kind involving the very principle of the ascetic life. So is it with the sacramental question; and the doctrine prevalent in the fourth century was nothing else but another form, or expression, of the very principle which the ascetic life embodied. The ascetic error did not consist in a denial, or exclusion, of what is moral, spiritual, and real; but in thrusting forward, and in making too much of, what is visible, formal, and accidental. Holiness and purity were not denied; but virginity and bodily purity were chiefly talked of, and were regarded as if they implied, and conveyed, and were the equivalents of, genuine moral qualities.

The substitution of the form for the substance, is so prominently characteristic of the ascetic scheme of life, that I cannot suppose it to be called in question. But now, what was the sacramental doctrine of the very same men? It was-not a denial of grace, and of the spiritual realities of the christian life, but a putting foremost, and a talking most of, the rite, as a rite. The very men who were accustomed to use the words sanctity and virginity, continence and celibacy, as synonymous terms, or as equivalents, did also constantly speak of baptism, and of the eucharist, as intrinsically holy, and as conveying holiness; or, at the best, they so held up these rites before the people, as led them to pay a fatally exclusive regard to the ceremony; while moral and spiritual qualities, or states of the heart, were lost sight of.-The very man who thinks himself as holy as Gabriel, because a virgin, and who reckons so many

hours' fasting to be worth a certain quantum of expiatory merit, is he who attributes a justifying and sanctifying efficacy to baptismal water, and believes that the swallowing, or the carrying about with him, a consecrated wafer, shall get him admitted into heaven. Is there then no oneness of principle, in these several notions? But if the analogy be admitted, then, to be consistent, we should either admit the ascetic doctrine along with the sacramental, both springing, as they do, from the same principle; or else, rejecting that principle, disallow both of its

consequences.

The sacramental and the ascetic doctrine were however connected by yet another link. We have adverted to the fact that it was the ascetics exclusively, or nearly so, who pretended to miraculous powers; and it was they too who were the dealers with the demon legions. That is to say, men who are cut off from the employments, interests, cares, and enjoyments of common life, and who are kept also out of the school of practical wisdom, must provide themselves with excitements of another order, and they will court such as being condemned by reason, will be left to their uninvaded enjoyment.-In other words, monks and hermits, and men forced by wild notions of religion from off the path of humanity-such will feed upon wonders. The transition from what is unnatural to what is supernatural, is an easy process, needing nothing but so much religious belief as may fall far short of what would render a man either pious, or moral.

But the supernatural has its two species, and superstition has, therefore, its two kinds. Events out of the course of nature are either irregular or regular, the one being directly miraculous, the other indirectly so, and subjected to a fixed mode of operation. The first are miraculous in the usual sense of the word; the second, consisting in ritual performances, involve indeed an immediate interposition of the divine power, but yet are connected with the due observance of certain ceremonies. The exorcisms of the ancient church occupied a place between these two species of miracles, for while they were occasional and visible, like proper miracles, they nevertheless followed, infallibly, a given formula, and were effected, like any other church services, by a distinct