and afterwards, there were, in and about Judea, several sodalities of devout and abstracted persons, whose temper and course of life, there is reason to think, were decidedly of a higher moral tone than that of the mass of their countrymen, such as that, if they did not provoke rebuke from the Teacher of truth, they seemed almost to be entitled to the implicit commendation of some neutral reference, or at least the bare insertion of their name in the evangelic record.

But the Essenes are neither blamed, nor are they commended; -they are not so much as named by the Evangelists, or by the Apostles! They are not blamed;-and therefore we may, with some confidence, infer that their errors, of whatever sort they might be, did not, as related to the light then enjoyed by the jewish people, imply, like those of the sadducees, impiety and contempt of sacred things; or like those of the pharisees, hypocrisy, spiritual debauchery, and an open contempt of the divine authority. They are not commended; therefore, with the same certainty we may assume, that the principles of the sect were altogether foreign to those of the christian dispensation; and that there was no such accordance between the two systems as that the Institutor of the new was bound, in mere candour, to recognise this existing scheme of a religious life. Christianity was another doctrine, resting on other motives, tending to another end, and reaching its end by other means. Our Lord recognises Moses and the Prophets, whose words he came not to abrogate, but to confirm -he na nes and refutes the sadducee, who 'greatly erred;' and he names and sternly condemns the pharisee, who corrupts, while professing to honour religion; but he makes not even a passing allusion to the Essene, whom, so often, in the wilderness of Judea,' he must have personally encountered :-no, for if there was no violent contrariety between his code of piety and theirs, there was no affinity. Christianity was not to be a refreshed and reanimated essenism. Christianity, impelled by the hand of heaven, took its bold course right through the midst of the jewish sects: -one it repelled, one it overthrew; but the essenic it cleared without either collision or attraction! so does a massy planet with its satellites, while it holds to its own orbit, yet confess the disturbing force of neighbouring solid masses; but as to the pallid

comet-congeries of mists, feeble phosphorescence as it is-it may come and go, and sweep its attenuated glimmer through the very field of that orbit, without effecting the slightest perturbation which the nicest instrument can detect;-without winning to itself the honour of having caused, among those orbs, even so much as a momentary tremor! This instructive negative fact claims the consideration of those ingenuous and calm-minded persons who are now clinging to the belief-a belief they cannot relinquish while they continue to bend to antiquity, that christianity favours, and that it will, where allowed to do so, expand itself into some form of asceticism. The milder aspect of the ascetic life, whether eremitic or conventual-solitary or social, such as it might have been found in some few favoured spots at the close of the third century, was, in substance and in spirit, the very same thing as is described by Philo, Josephus, and others, as extant in the apostolic age. But now the nicene church, in the most confident terms, declares this asceticism, in both kinds, to be-christianity perfectly embodied! and yet this very scheme of life, coming under our Lord's constant observation as it did, never once attracts his eye-he never once pointed to it as a shadow, at least, of that bright reality which his church should, ere long, exhibit to the world! Only let us lead Basil, Ephrem, Palladius, Athanasius, among the ancient Essenes, and they could not but confess themselves to be at home: and yet Christ and the Apostles lived in the neighbourhood of these religionists, without seeming so much as to know that men of piety were about them, and without, in any instance, acknowledging a spiritual consanguinity! We may thence safely infer that Christ's religion has no affinity with the meagre, melancholy, purblind, ascetic philosophy, which was to be the glory, the boast, the idol, and the ruin of the nicene church.

In the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles, if we discern some faint traces of pharisaic rigidity, we discover not one trace of

* Philo, Quod omnis Probus Liber.' This writer's commendatory description of the Essenes of his time, too long to cite, and which hardly bears retrenchment, offers a convincing instance of the substantial identity of the several forms of the ascetic institute. If Philo is to be relied upon, these jewish ascetics were in a much higher moral condition than the christian monks of the fourth century.

essenic abstractedness on this scene all is life, vigour, movement, force; and one may as easily imagine Peter, James, John, Paul, to have prayed to the saints (as the nicene doctors did) as to have built themselves into crannies of the rocks, like the nicene hermits. But it will be well to adduce an instance; and one in point meets us so early as the end of the second chapter.

And all that believed were together, and had all things common, and sold their possessions and goods,' &c.* An essenic practice the gregarious, or conventual life, and the community of goods! what more then do we want as our warrant for setting on foot the monastic life! It is not so, if we think a moment. The jewish seclusionists, as well as the monks afterwards, well understood-how could they fail to understand so simple a principle of economics ?-that a community of goods, as a permanent ordinance, is totally impracticable, except on one condition, namely the abrogation of marriage, in one of the two modes in which it may be abrogated; that is to say, either by admitting a community of wives, or by the renunciation, altogether, of the sexual relationship. The Essenes adopted the latter plan, and rigidly excluded women from those of their establishments in which the community of goods was actually carried into effect. It cannot be necessary to prove that the family economy-the sacredness of the matrimonial connexion, and the consequent dependence of children upon their parents, must very speedily break up any scheme intended to perpetuate the non-property principle. Therefore, we infer, without a doubt, that, in a society recognising marriage, and giving its highest sanction to the domestic relationships, a community of goods could never have been more than a momentary exuberance of that same feeling, which, in its steady and ordinary condition, should make christians forward to 'give to every one that needeth.' That christianity was not intended to break up the domestic economy is manifest, inasmuch as the peculiar duties of this economy are solemnly enforced by the Apostles; nor, in fact, do we find any traces of this momentary zeal, after the first few weeks or months of its appearance. The very precept -' charge the rich that they be Acts ii. 44, and iv. 32.

ready to communicate, willing to distribute,' is proof that a community of goods was not to be the law of the christian institute. Had it been so, the distinction between rich and poor could have had no more place. The apostle James consoles the poor of the church, and checks the pride of the rich;-implying that there were-rich and poor; but he says nothing tending to restore, as if it had culpably fallen into disuse, the early practice of a community of goods.

Here then is an instance in which the Church touched upon the borders of the essenic and monastic institute-touched, for a mere moment, and then bore away, holding its after-course surrounded by the undamaged elements of the social system. Had any such enormity and folly as that of essenism, or monkery, been intended to constitute a part of christianity, this was the occasion for taking it up, and for founding, upon the community of goods, the monastic institute. But, instead of it—woman's honour was respected, a free, and really virtuous association of the sexes, such as is always practicable where marriage has not been discountenanced, became the characteristic of the first christians; and therefore, although christians continued to exercise a noble liberality toward each other, the community of goods, like a wave only in the spring-tide of love, was seen no more after its first swell had subsided.

It has been the characteristic of fanaticism, in all ages, to snatch at things the most casual, and to hoist them into the place of rules and principles. Every unimportant circumstance of the canonical history has thus, in its turn, been perverted, as if it should be the germ of a permanent practice. To idolize whatever is trivial, and to forget whatever is momentous-to pay more regard to the exception than to the rule, is the temper of superstition! Gathering the drift of the New Testament morality, it is perfectly certain that it was not the intention of our Lord to break up the social system; any instances therefore of an opposite aspect, such as a momentary permission, or commendation, of the community of goods, or of celibacy, are exceptions clearly, not rules; and to take an exception for a rule, is to throw contempt upon law.

' . . . . And breaking bread from house to house, did eat their

meat with gladness and singleness of heart."* The first christians, therefore, were neither Essenes, nor ascetics, after the fashion of St. Antony, St. Pachomius, or La Trappe. At the very moment while the former, seated in austere silence around their common table, were taking their morsel of bread, with salt and hyssop, the first christian society the Apostles presiding, were gladdening their social repast with the free interchange of joyous sentiments. Essenism and asceticism stand on one side of a broad contrast; christianity on the other. But the nicene monkery was, in all points of discipline, an exaggerated copy of the earlier form of the austere philosophy; and therefore it stood just so much the further removed from the spirit and practice of apostolic christianity. This sort of comparison must, with reasonable men, be conclusive against the ascetic doctrine.

For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things,' &c.t Now it is curious, and more than curious-it is highly instructive to take in hand the ponderous collections that have been made of the acts and canons of all the councils and synods of many centuries;-vast commentary upon the simple apostolic text! Yet the first of these councils, the council of Jerusalem, is surely not to be regarded as the least authentic, or the lowest in authority of the series! But how remarkable is the fact which forces itself upon our notice, in comparing this, the first of the series, with all that follow! nowhere else, within the compass of history, sacred or profane, can we find so violent a contradiction among things allied by a bond of artificial combination. On nearly fourteen hundred recorded occasions, in the lapse of about the same number of years, has the Church, universal or provincial, met in council, for the settlement of doctrine and discipline. But, in examining the acts of the most noted of these legislative conventions, while it is quite true that, in particular instances, a remission of grievances, or a lightening of intolerable burdens has been the object of their decisions, yet, looking to the general complexion, or ordinary tendency of them, or taking the upshot, in a course of years (any one century that may be selected) the effect of these decisions has been to IMPOSE BURDENS, either upon † Acts xv. 28.

Acts ii. 46.