Tertullian had condemned the heathen persecutors of the Christians, for using outward force in matters of conscience; appealing to Christ and the apostles, who never persecuted, but rather suffered and died. "Think you," says he, "to serve God by killing us with your own hand? Ye err, ye err, if ye, poor mortals, think this; God has not hangmen for priests. Christ teaches us to bear wrong, not to revenge it." The Donatist bishop Gaudentius says: "God appointed proph ets and fishermen, not princes and soldiers, to spread the faith." Still we cannot forget, that the Donatists were the first who appealed to the imperial tribunal in an ecclesiastical matter, and did not, till after that tribunal had decided against them, turn against the state-church system.

CHAPTER IV.

THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF MONASTICISM.

SOURCES.

1. Greek: SOORATES: Hist. Eccles. lib. iv. cap. 23 sqq. SoZoMEN: H. E l. i. c. 12–14; iii. 14; vi. 28-84. PALLADIUS (first a monk and disciple of the younger Macarius, then bishop of Helenopolis in Bithynia, ordained by Chrysostom; † 431): Historia Lausiaca (Iσropía πpòs Aavrov, a court officer under Theodosius II., to whom the work was dedicated), composed about 421, with enthusiastic admiration, from personal acquaintance, of the most celebrated contemporaneous ascetics of Egypt. THEODORET († 457): Historia religiosa, seu ascetica vivendi ratio (póseos iσropía), biographies of thirty Oriental anchorets and monks, for the most part from personal observation. NILUS the elder (an anchoret on Mt. Sinai, † about 450): De vita ascetica, De exercitatione monastica, Epistolæ 355, and other writings.

2. Latin: RUFINUS († 410): Histor. Eremitica, s. Vita Patrum. SULPICIUS SEVERUS (about 400): Dialogi III. (the first dialogue contains a lively and entertaining account of the Egyptian monks, whom he visited; the two others relate to Martin of Tours). Cassianus († 432): Institutiones cœnobiales, and Collationes Patrum (spiritual conversations of eastern monks).

Also the ascetic writings of ATHANASIUS (Vita Antonii), BASIL, GREGORY NAZIANZEN CHRYSOSTOM, NILUS, ISIDORE OF PELUSIUM, among the Greek; AMBROSE, AUGUSTINE, JEROME (his Lives of anchorets, and his letters), CASSIODORUS, and GREGORY THE GREAT, among the Latin fathers.

LATER LITERATURE.

L HOLSTENIUS (borr st Hamburg 1596, a Protest., then a Romanist convert, and librarian of the Vatican): Codex regularum monastic., first Rom. 1661; then, er'arged, Par. and Augsb. in 6 vols. fol. The older Greek MENOLOG. A (unvoλóyia), and MENÆA (uŋvaîa), and the Latin CALENDARIA and MARTYROLOGIA, i. e. church calendars or indices of memorial days (days of the earthly death and heavenly birth) of the

saints, with short biographical notices for liturgical use. P. HERBERT ROSWEYDE (Jesuit): Vita Patrum, sive Historia Eremiticæ, libri x. Antw. 1628. AOTA SANCTORUM, quotquot toto orbe coluntur, Antw. 1643-1786, 53 vols. fol. (begun by the Jesuit Bollandus, continued by several scholars of his order, called Bollandists, down to the 11th Oct. in the calendar of saints' days, and resumed in 1845, after long interruption, by Theiner and others). D'AOHERY and MABILLON (Benedictines): Acta Sanctorum ordinis S. Benedicti, Par. 1668-1701, 9 vols. fol. (to 1100). PET. HELYOT (Franciscan): Histoire des ordres monastiques religieux et militaires, Par. 1714-'19, 8 vols. 4to. ALBAN BUTLER (R. C.): The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and other principal Saints (arranged according to the Catholic calendar, and completed to the 81st Dec.), first 1745; often since (best ed. Lond. 1812-'13, in 12 vols.; another, Baltimore, 1844, in 4 vols). GIBBON: Chap. xxxvii. (Origin, Progress, and Effects of Monastic Life; very unfavorable, and written in lofty philosophical contempt). HENRION (R. C.): Histoire des ordres religieux, Par. 1835 (deutsch bearbeitet von S. Fehr, Tüb. 1845, 2 vols.). F. v. BIEDENFELD: Ursprung u. s. w. sämmtlicher Mönchsorden im Orient u. Occident, Weimar, 1837, 3 vols. SCHMIDT (R. C.): Die Mönchs-, Nonnen-, u. geistlichen Ritterorden nebst. Ordensregeln u. Abbildungen., Augsb. 1838, sqq. H. H. MILMAN (Anglican): History of Ancient Christianity, 1844, book iii. ch. 11. H. RUFFNER (Presbyterian): The Fathers of the Desert, New York, 1850, 2 vols. (full of curious information, in popular form). Count de MonTALEMBERT (R. C.): Les Moines d'Occident depuis St. Bénoît jusqu'à St. Bernard, Par. 1860, sqq. (to embrace 6 vols.); transl. into English: The Monks of the West, etc., Edinb. and Lond. 1861, in 2 vols. (vol. i. gives the history of monasticism before St. Benedict, vol. ii. is mainly devoted to St. Benedict; eloquently eulogistic of, and apologetic for, monasticism). OTTO ZÖCKLER: Kritische Geschichte der Askese. Frankf. a. M. 1863. Comp. also the relevant sections of TILLEMONT, FLEURY, SCHRÖCKн (vols. v. and viii.), NEANDER, and GIESELER.

§ 28. Origin of Christian Monasticism. Comparison with other forms of Asceticism.

HOSPINIAN: De origine et progressu monachatus, 1. vi., Tig. 1588, and enlarged, Genev. 1669, fol. J. A. MÖHLER (R. O.): Geschichte des Mönchthums in der Zeit seiner Entstehung u. ersten Ausbildung, 1836 (in his collected works, Regensb. vol. ii. p. 165 sqq.). ISAAO TAYLOR (Independent): Ancient Christianity, Lond. 1844, vol. i. p. 299 sqq. A. VOGEL: Ueber das Mönchthum, Berl. 1858 (in the "Deutsche Zeitschrift für christl. Wissenschaft," etc.). P. SOHAFF: Ueber den Ursprung und Charakter des Mönchthums (in Dorner's, etc. "Jahrbücher für deutsche Theol.," 1861, p. 555 ff.). J. CROPP: Origenes et causæ monachatus. Gott. 1863.

In the beginning of the fourth century monasticism appears in the history of the church, and thenceforth occupies a distinguished place. Beginning in Egypt, it spread in an irresistible tide over the East and the West, continued to be the chief repository of the Christian life down to the times of the Reformation, and still remains in the Greek and Roman churches an indispensable institution and the most productive seminary of saints, priests, and missionaries.

With the ascetic tendency in general, monasticism in particular is found by no means only in the Christian church, but in other religions, both before and after Christ, especially in the East. It proceeds from religious seriousness, enthusiasm, and ambition; from a sense of the vanity of the world, and an inclination of noble souls toward solitude, contemplation, and freedom from the bonds of the flesh and the temptations of the world; but it gives this tendency an undue predominance over the social, practical, and world-reforming spirit of religion. Among the Hindoos the ascetic system may be traced back almost to the time of Moses, certainly beyond Alexander the Great, who found it there in full force, and substantially with the same characteristics which it presents at the present day.' Let us consider it a few moments.

The Vedas, portions of which date from the fifteenth century before Christ, the Laws of Menu, which were completed before the rise of Buddhism, that is, six or seven centuries before our era, and the numerous other sacred books of the Indian religion, enjoin by example and precept entire abstraction of thought, seclusion from the world, and a variety of

1

Comp. the occasional notices of the Indian gymnosophists in Strabo (lib. IV. cap. 1, after accounts from the time of Alexander the Great), Arrian (Exped. Alex. 1. vii. c. 1-3, and Hist. Ind. c. 11), Plinius (Hist. Nat. vii. 2), Diodorus Siculus (lib. ii.), Plutarch (Alex. 64), Porphyry (De abstinent. 1. iv.), Lucian (Fugit. 7), Clemens Alex. (Strom. 1. i. and iii.), and Augustine (De civit. Dei, 1. xiv. c. 17: "Per opacas India solitudines, quum quidam nudi philosophentur, unde gymnosophists nominantur; adhibent tamen genitalibus tegmina, quibus per cætera membrorum carent;" and l. xv. 20, where he denies all merit to their celibacy, because it is not “secundum fidem summi boni, qui est Deus"). With these ancient representations agree the narratives of Fon Koueki (about 400, translated by M. A. Rémusat, Par 1886), Marco Polo (1280), Bernier (1670), Hamilton (1700), Papi, Niebuar, Orlich Sonnerat, and others.

penitential and meritorious acts of self-mortification, by which the devotee assumes a proud superiority over the vulgar herd of mortals, and is absorbed at last into the divine fountain of all being. The ascetic system is essential alike to Brahmanism and Buddhism, the two opposite and yet cognate branches of the Indian religion, which in many respects are similarly related to each other as Judaism is to Christianity, or also as Romanism to Protestantism. Buddhism is a later reformation of Brahmanism; it dates probably from the sixth century before Christ (according to other accounts much earlier), and, although subsequently expelled by the Brahmins from Hindostan, it embraces more followers than any other heathen religion, since it rules in Farther India, nearly all the Indian islands, Japan, Thibet, a great part of China and Central Asia to the borders of Siberia. But the two religions start from opposite principles. Brahmanic asceticism' proceeds from a pantheistic view of the world, the Buddhistic from an atheistic and nihilistic, yet very earnest view; the one is controlled by the idea of the absolute but abstract unity and a feeling of contempt of the world, the other by the idea of the absolute but unreal variety and a feeling of deep grief over the empti ness and nothingness of all existence; the one is predominantly objective, positive, and idealistic, the other more subjective, negative, and realistic; the one aims at an absorption into the universal spirit of Brahm, the other consistently at an absorp tion into nonentity, if it be true that Buddhism starts from an atheistic rather than a pantheistic or dualistic basis. "Brahmanism" says a modern writer on the subject"-"looks back to the beginning, Buddhism to the end; the former loves cosmogony, the latter eschatology. Both reject the existing world; the Brahman despises it, because he contrasts it with the higher being of Brahma, the Buddhist bewails it because of its unrealness; the former sees God in all, the other emptiness in all." Yet as all extremes meet, the abstract all-entity

'The Indian word for it is tapas, i. e. the burning out, or the extinction of the Individual being and its absorption into the essence of Brahma.

• Ad. Wuttke, in his able and instructive work: Das Geistesleben der Chinesen. Japaner, und Indier (second part of his History of Heathenism), 1858, p. 593.