SKETCH OF THE ENTHUSIASM OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH.
An intelligent Christian, fraught with scriptural principles in their
simplicity and purity, but hitherto uninformed of Church history, who
should peruse discursively the ecclesiastical writers of the age of
Jerom, Ambrose, and Basil, would presently recoil with an emotion of
disappointment, perplexity, and alarm. That within a period which does
not exceed the reach of oral tradition, the religion of the apostles
should have so much changed its character, and so much have lost its
beauty, he could not have supposed possible. He has heard indeed of the
corruptions of popery, and of the enormous abuses prevalent in "the dark
ages;" and he has been told too, by those who had a special argument to
prop, that the era of the secular prosperity of the church was that also
of the incipient corruption of religion. But he finds in fact that there
is scarcely an error of doctrine, or an absurdity of practice,
ordinarily attributed to the popes and councils of later times, and
commonly included in the indictment against Rome, which may not, in its
elements, or even in a developed form, be traced to the writings of
those whose ancestors, at the third or fourth remove only, were the
hearers of Paul and John.
But after the first shock of such an unprepared perusal of the fathers
has passed, and when calm reflection has returned, and especially when,
by taking up these early writers from the commencement, the progression
of decay and perversion has been gradually and distinctly contemplated,
then, though the disappointment will in great part remain, the appalling
surmises at first engendered in the modern reader's mind, will be
dispelled, and he will even be able to pursue his course of reading with
pleasure, and to derive from it much solid instruction. Considerations
such as the following will naturally present themselves to him in
mitigation of his first painful impressions.
While contemplating in their infant state those notions and practices
(of the third century, for example) which afterwards swelled into
enormous evils, it is difficult not to view them as if they were loaded
with the blame of their after issues; and then it is hard not to
attribute to their originators and promoters the accumulated criminality
that should be shared in small portions by the men of many following
generations. But the individuals thus unfairly dealt by, far from
forecasting the consequences of the sentiments and usages they favored,
far from viewing them, as we do, darkened by the cloud of mischiefs that
was heaped upon them in after times, saw the same objects bright and
fair in the recommendatory gleam of a pure and a venerated age. The very
abuses which make the twelfth century abhorrent on the page of history,
were, in the fourth, fragrant with the practice and suffrage of a
blessed company of primitive confessors. The remembered saints, who had
given their bodies to the flames, had also lent their voice and example
to those unwise excesses which at length drove true religion from the
earth. Untaught by experience, the ancient church surmised not of the
occult tendencies of the course it pursued, nor should be loaded with
consequences which human sagacity could not well have foreseen.
Each of the great corruptions of later ages took its rise, in the first,
second, or third century, in a manner which it would be harsh to say was
deserving of strong reprehension. Thus the secular domination exercised
by the bishops, and at length supremely by the bishops of Rome, may be
traced very distinctly to the proper respect paid by the people, even in
the apostolic age, to the disinterested wisdom of their bishops in
deciding their worldly differences. The worship of images, the
invocation of saints, and the superstition of relics, were but
expansions of the natural feeling of veneration and affection cherished
towards the memory of those who had suffered and died for the truth. And
thus, in like manner, the errors and abuses of monkery all sprang, by
imperceptible augmentations, from sentiments perfectly natural to the
sincere and devout Christian in times of persecution, disorder, and
general corruption of morals.
Again: human nature, which is far more uniform than may be imagined,
when suddenly it is beheld under some new aspect of time and country, is
also susceptible of much greater diversities of habit and feeling than
those are willing to believe who have seen it on no side but one. This
double lesson, taught by history and travel, should be well learned by
every one who undertakes to estimate the merits of men that have lived
in remote times, and under other skies.
A caution against the influence of narrow prejudice is obviously more
needful in relation to the persons and practices of ancient
Christianity, than when common history is the subject of inquiry; for in
whatever relates to religion, every one carries with him, not merely the
ordinary prepossessions of time and country, but an unbending standard
of conduct and temper, which he is forward to compare, in his particular
manner, with whatever offends his notions of right. But though the rule
of Scripture morals is unchangeable, and must be applied with
uncompromising impartiality to human nature under every variety of
circumstance, yet is it impractible, at the distance of upwards of a
thousand years, so fully to calculate those circumstances, and so to
perceive the motives of conduct, as is necessary for estimating fairly
the innocence or the criminality of particular actions or habits of
life. The question of abstract fitness, and that of personal
blameworthiness, should ever be kept apart: at least they should be kept
apart when it is asked—and we are often tempted to ask it in the perusal
of church history—May such men be deemed Christians, who acted and
wrote thus and thus? Before a doubt of this kind could be solved
satisfactorily, we must know—what can never be known till the day of
universal discovery—how much of imperfection and obliquity may consist
with the genuineness of real piety; and again, how much of real
obliquity there might be, under the actual circumstances of the case, in
the conduct in question. Who can doubt that if the memorials of the
present times, copious, and yet inadequate as they must be, shall remain
to a distant age, they will offer similar perplexities to the future
reader, who, amidst his frequent admiration or approval, will be
compelled to exclaim—But how may we think these men to have been
Christians? Christianity is in gradual process of reforming the
principles and practices of mankind, and when the sanative operation
shall have advanced some several stages beyond its present point, the
notions and usages of our day, compared with the commands of Christ, as
then understood, will, no doubt, seem incredibly defective.
Perhaps it may be said, that in all matters of sentiment, depending on
physical temperament, and modes of life, the people of the British
islands are less qualified to appreciate the merits of the nations of
antiquity than almost any other people of Christendom; and perhaps,
also, by national arrogance and pertinacity of taste, we are less ready
to bend indulgently to usages unlike our own than any other people.
Stiff in the resoluteness of an exaggerated notion of the right of
private judgment, we bring all things unsparingly to the one standard of
belief and practice; or rather to our particular pattern of that
standard; and do not, until our better nature prevails, own brotherhood
with Christians of another complexion and costume. A somewhat austere
good sense, belonging, first, to the haughtiness and energy of the
English character, then to the liberality of our political institutions,
and lastly, but not least, to the all-pervading spirit and habits of
trade, renders the style of the early Christian writers much more
distasteful to us than it has proved to Christians of other countries.
Moreover, recent enhancements of the national character, resulting from
the diffusion of the physical sciences, and from the more extended
prevalence of commercial feelings, have placed those writers at a point
much further removed from our predilections than that at which they
stood a century ago.
* * * * *
But again: in abatement of the chagrin which a well-instructed Christian
must feel in first opening the remains of ecclesiastical literature, it
must be remembered, that these works offer a very defective image of the
state of religion at the era of their production; that is to say, of
religion in its _recesses_, which are truly the homes of Christianity.
Those who _write_ are by no means always those among the ministers of
religion whom it would be judicious to select as the best samples of the
spirit of their times. Moreover, it is the taste of a following age that
has determined which among the writers of the preceding period should be
transmitted to posterity; and in many instances, it is manifest, that a
depraved preference has given literary canonization to authors whose
ambition was much rather to shine as masters of a florid eloquence, than
to feed the flock of Christ. It was therefore an egregious error to
suppose that the spiritual character of the Church lies broadly on the
surface of its extant literature: on the contrary, charity may easily
find large room for pleasing conjectures relative to obscure piety, of
which no traces are to be found on the pages of saints and bishops. The
record of the spiritual church is "on high,"—not in the tomes that make
our libraries proud.
These, and other considerations, which will present themselves to a
candid and intelligent mind, cannot but remove much of the embarrassment
and disrelish that are likely to attend a first converse with ancient
divinity. And the pious reader will proceed with heartfelt satisfaction
to collect evidence of the fact, which some modern sophists have so much
labored to obscure, that the rudiments, at least, of revealed religion,
as now understood by the mass of Christians, were then firmly held by
the body of the Church. And he will rejoice also to meet with not less
satisfactory proofs of the energy and intenseness of practical
Christianity among a large number of those who made profession of the
name.
Nevertheless, after every fair allowance has been made, and every
indulgence given to diversity of circumstance, and after the errors and
disgraces of our own times have been placed in counterpoise to those of
the ancient church, there will remain glaring indications of a
deep-seated corruption of religious sentiment, leaving hardly a single
feeling proper to the Christian life in its purity and simplicity. It is
not heresy, it is not the denial of the principal scriptural doctrines,
that is to be charged on the ancient church; the body of divinity held
its integrity. Nor is it the want of heroic virtue that we lament. But a
transmutation of the objects of the devout affections into objects of
_imaginative delectation_ had taken place, had rendered the piety of a
numerous class purely fictitious, had tinged, more or less, with
idealism, the religious sentiments of all but a few, and had opened the
way by which entered at length, the dense and fatal delusions of a
superstition so gross as hardly to retain a redeeming quality.
Not a few of the Christians of the third century, and multitudes in the
fourth and fifth, especially among the recluses, having lost the
forcible and genuine feeling of guilt and danger, proper to those who
confess themselves transgressors of the divine law, and in consequence
become blind to the real purport of the Gospel, fixed their gaze upon
the ideal splendors of Christianity, were smitten with the phase it
presents, of beauty, of sublimity, of infinitude, of intellectual
elevation, were charmed with its supposed doctrine of abstraction from
mundane agitations; and found within the sphere of its revelations
unfathomable depths, where vague meditation might plunge and plunge with
endless descents. Fascinated, deluded, and still blinded more by the
deepening shades of error, they forgot almost entirely the emotions of a
true repentance, and of a cordial faith, and of a cheerful obedience;
and in the rugged path of gratuitous afflictions, and unnatural
mortifications, pursued a spectral resemblance of piety, unsubstantial
and cold as the mists of night.
While hundreds were fatally infatuated by this enthusiastic religion,
the piety of thousands was more or less impaired by their mere
admiration of it; and very few altogether escaped the sickening
infection which its presence spread through the church. A volume might
soon be filled with proofs of this assertion, drawn exclusively from the
writings of those of the fathers who retained most of the vigor of
native good sense, and who held nearest to the purity of Christian
doctrine. The works of Chrysostom would afford abundant illustration of
this sort. Let his Epistle to the Monks be singled out, which contains
many admirable instructions and exhortations on the subject of prayer;
and which, with much propriety, recommends the practice of ejaculatory
supplication. Nevertheless, there is scarcely a passage quoted from the
Scriptures in this piece that is not distorted from its obvious and
simple meaning, in such a manner as would best comport with the
practices and notions of the ascetic life. If the meaning put by
Chrysostom upon the texts he adduces be the true one, then must a large
part of the inspired writings be deemed altogether useless to those who
have not abjured the duties of common life. Or if such persons may still
be permitted to enjoy their part in the Scriptures, not less than the
monks, then must we suppose a _double sense_ throughout the Bible. In
fact the notion of a double sense flowed inevitably from the monkish
institution, and wrought immense mischief in the church.
Modern writers of a certain class have expatiated with disproportionate
amplification upon the open and flagrant corruptions which, as it is
alleged, followed as a natural consequence from the secular
aggrandizement of the clergy, when a voice from the heavens of political
power said to the church, "Come up hither." No doubt an enhancement and
expansion of pride, ambition, luxuriousness, and every mundane passion,
took place at Rome, at Constantinople, at Alexandria, at Antioch, and
elsewhere, when emperors, instead of oppressing, or barely tolerating
the doctrine of Christ, bowed obsequiously to his ministers. But the
very same evils, far from being called into existence by the breath of
imperial favor, had reached a bold height even while the martyrs were
still bleeding. And moreover, how offensive or injurious soever these
scandals might be, either before or after the epoch of the political
triumph of the cross, they did but scathe the exterior of Christianity.
In every age the vices, always duly blazoned, of secular churchmen, have
stained its surface. But when there has been warmth and purity within,
the mischief occasioned by such evils has scarcely been more than that
of giving point to the railleries of men who would still have scoffed,
though not a bishop had been arrogant, nor a presbyter licentious.
Christianity had lost its simplicity and glory in the hands of its most
devoted friends long before the alliance between the church and the
world had taken place. The copious history of this internal perversion
would afford a worthy subject of diligent inquiry; and though materials
for a complete explication of the process of corruption are not in
existence, enough remains to invite and reward the necessary labor.
* * * * *
The enthusiasm of the ancient Church presents itself under several
distinct forms, among which the following may be mentioned as the most
conspicuous:—the enthusiasm of voluntary martyrdom; that of miraculous
pretension; that of prophetical interpretation, or millenarianism; that
of the mystical exposition of Scripture; and that of monachism. Of
these, the last, whether or not it was truly the parent of the other
kinds, includes them all as parts of itself; for whatever perversions of
Christianity were chargeable upon the sentiments and practices of the
general church, the same belonged by eminence to the recluses. A review
of the principles and the ingredients of this system will better accord
with the limits and design of this essay, than an extended examination
of facts under the several heads just named.
* * * * *
A strict equity has by no means always been observed by protestant
writers in their criminations of the Romish Church. With the view of
aggravating the just and necessary indignation of mankind against the
mother of corruption, it has been usual to lay open the concealments of
the monastery; and with materials before him so various and so copious,
even the dullest writer might cheaply be entertaining, eloquent, and
vigorous. Meantime it is not duly considered, or not fairly stated, that
the reprobation passes back, in full force, to an age much more remote
than that of the supremacy of Rome. The bishops of Rome did but avail
themselves of the aid of a system which had reached a full maturity
without their fostering care; a system which had been sanctioned and
cherished, almost without an exception, by every father of the church,
eastern and western; which had come down in its elements even from the
primitive age, and which had won for itself a suffrage so general, if
not universal, that he must have possessed an extraordinary measure of
wisdom, courage, and influence, who should have ventured beyond a
cautious and moderated censure of its more obvious abuses.
Every essential principle, almost every adjunct, and almost every vice
of the monkery of the tenth or twelfth century, may be detected in that
of the fourth: or if an earlier period were named, proof would not be
wanting to make the allegation defensible. But if it be affirmed, or if
it could be proved, that the actual amount of hypocrisy and corruption
usually sheltered beneath the roof of the monastery, was greater in the
later than in the earlier age, it should as a counterpoise be stated,
that in the later period the religious houses contained almost all the
piety and learning that anywhere existed: while in the former there was
certainly as much piety without as within these seclusions; and much
more of learning. The monkery of the middle ages, moreover, stands
partially excused by the dense ignorance of the times; while that of the
ancient Church is condemned by the surrounding light, both of human and
divine knowledge. The very establishments which redeem the age of Roger
Bacon from oblivion and contempt, do but blot the times of Gregory
Nazianzen.
Eusebius, followed by several later writers, asserts, although in
opposition to the most explicit evidence, and manifestly for the purpose
of giving sanction to a system so much admired in his time, that the
Christian sodalities were directly derived from those of the Essenes and
Therapeutics of Judea and Egypt, whom he affirms to have been Christian
recluses of the first century, indebted for their rules and
establishment to St. Mark. The testimony of the Jew Philo gives
conclusive contradiction to this sinister averment; not to mention that
of the elder Pliny, and of Josephus; for the minute description given by
that writer of the opinions and observances of the sect, besides that it
is incompatible with the supposition that the people spoken of were
Christians, was actually composed in the lifetime of Paul and Peter, and
the recluses are _then_ mentioned as having long existed under the same
regulations. Nevertheless, the coincidence between the sentiments and
practices of the Jewish and of the Christian monks, is too complete to
be attributed either to accident, or merely to the influence of general
principles, operating alike in both instances; and the more limited
assertion of Photius may safely be adopted, who affirms that "the sect
of Jews that followed a philosophic life, whether contemplative or
active—the one called Essenes, the other Therapeutics—not only founded
monasteries and private sanctuaries, but laid down the rules which have
been adopted by those who, in our own times, lead a solitary life."
A reference to the previous existence of monasticism among the Jews, in
a very specious, and, in some respects, commendable mode, is
indispensable to the forming of an equitable judgment of the conduct of
those Christians in Palestine and Egypt, who first abandoned the duties
of common life for the indulgence of their religious tastes. They did
but adopt a system already sanctioned by long usage, and which, though
existing in the time of Christ and the apostles, had not drawn upon
itself from him or them any _explicit_ condemnation: and which might
even plead a semblance of support from some of their injunctions,
literally understood, though plainly condemned by the spirit of
Christianity.
Nor is this the sole circumstance that should, in mere justice, be
considered in connection with the rise of Christian monachism; for
before the mere facts can be understood, and certainly before the due
measure of blame can be assigned to the parties concerned, it is
indispensable that we divest ourselves of the prejudices, physical,
moral, and intellectual, which belong to our austere climate, high-toned
irritability, edacious appetites, and pampered constitutions; to our
rigid style of thinking, and to our commercial habits of feeling. The
Christian of England in the nineteenth century, and the Christian of
Syria in the second, stand almost at the extremest points of opposition
in all the non-essentials of human nature; and the former must possess
great pliability of imagination, and much of the philosophic temper, as
well as the spirit of Christian charity, fairly and fully to appreciate
the motives and conduct of the latter.
* * * * *
That quiescent under-action of the mind to which we apply the term
meditation, is a habit of thought that has been engrafted upon the
European intellect in consequence of the reception of Christianity. It
is a product almost as proper to Asia as are the aromatics of Arabia, or
the spices of India. The human mind does not everywhere expand in this
manner, nor spontaneously show these hues of heaven, nor emit this
fragrance, except under the fervent suns and deep azure skies of
tropical regions. Persia and India were the native soils of the
contemplative philosophy; as Greece was the source of the ratiocinative.
The immense difference between the Asiatic and the European turn of
mind—if the familiar phrase may be used—becomes conspicuous if some
pages of either the logic or ethics of Aristotle are compared with what
remains of the sentiments of the Gnostics. The influence of Christianity
upon the moderns has been to temper the severity of the ratiocinative
taste, with a taste for contemplation—contemplation by so much the
better than that of the oriental sages, as it takes its range in the
heart, not in the imagination. If the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures
had been confined to the east, as in fact they have been almost confined
to the west, the modern nations of Europe would perhaps have known as
little of the compass of the meditative faculty, and of its delights, as
did the Romans in the age of Sylla. The Greeks, being near to Asia
geographically, and near by similarity of climate, and near by the
repeated importations of eastern philosophy, imbibed something of the
spirit of tranquil abstraction: yet was it foreign to the genius of that
restless and reasoning people. Pythagoras probably, and certainly Plato,
whose mind was almost as much Asiatic as Grecian, and whose writings are
anomalies in Grecian literature, effected a partial amalgamation of the
oriental with the western style of thought. Yet the foreign mixture
would probably have disappeared if Christianity had not afterwards
diffused eastern sentiments through the west. The combination was again
cemented by the writings of those fathers who, after having studied
Plato, and taught the rhetoric and philosophy of Greece, devoted their
talents to the service of the Gospel.
But though the nations of the west have acquired a taste for this
species of thought, it is the distinction of the Asiatic to meditate; as
to reason and to act, is the glory of the European. To withdraw the soul
from the senses, to divorce the exterior from the inner man, to detain
the spirit within its own circle, and to accustom it there to find its
bliss; to penetrate the depths and concealments of the heart, to repose
during lengthened periods upon a single idea, without a wish for
progression or change; or to break away from the imperfections of the
visible world, to climb the infinite, to hold converse with supernal
beauty and excellence; these are the prerogatives and pleasures of the
intellectualist of Asia: and this is a happiness which he enjoys in a
perfection altogether unknown to the busy, nervous, and frigid people of
the north. If by favor of a peculiar temperament the oriental frees
himself from the solicitations of voluptuous indulgence; if the mental
tastes are vivid enough to counteract the appetites; then he finds a
life of inert abstraction, of abstemiousness, and of solitude, not
merely easy, but delicious.
The lassitude which belongs to his constitution and climate more than
suffices to reconcile the contemplatist to the want of those enjoyments
which are to be obtained only by toil. A genial temperature, and a
languid stomach, reduce the necessary charges of maintenance to an
amount that must seem incredibly small to the well-housed, well-clothed,
and high-fed people of northern Europe. The slenderest revenues are,
therefore, enough to free him from all cares of the present life. He has
only to renounce married life, its claims and its burdens, and then the
skeleton machinery of his individual existence may be impelled in its
daily round of sluggish movement, by air, and water, and a lettuce.
The Asiatic character is in no inconsiderable degree affected by the
habits which result from the insufferable fervor of the sun at noon, and
which compels a suspension of active employments during the broad light
of day. The period of venial indolance easily extends itself through all
the hours of sultry heat, if necessity does not exact labor. And then
the quiescence in which the day has been passed lends an elasticity of
mind to the hours of night, when the effulgent magnificence of the
heavens kindles the imagination, and enhances meditation to ecstasy. How
little beneath the lowering, and chilly, and misty skies of Britain, can
we appreciate the power of these natural excitements of mental
abstraction!
In an enumeration of the natural causes of the anchoretic life, the
influence of scenery should by no means be overlooked. As the gay and
multiform beauties of a broken surface, teeming with vegetation (when
seconded by favoring circumstances) generate the soul of poetry; so
(with similar aids) the habit of musing in pensive vacuity of thought is
cherished by the aspect of boundless wastes, and arid plains, or of
enormous piles of naked mountain: and to the spirit that has turned with
sickening or melancholy aversion from the haunts of man, such scenes are
not less grateful or less fascinating than are the most delicious
landscapes to the frolic eye of joyous youth. The wilderness of the
Jordan, the stony tracts of Arabia, the precincts of Sinai, and the dead
solitudes of sand traversed, but not enlivened by the Nile, offered
themselves, therefore, as the natural birth-places of monachism; and
skirting as they did the focus of religion, long continued (indeed they
have never wholly ceased) to invite numerous desertions from the ranks
of common life.
A general and extreme corruption of manners, the wantonness, and folly,
and enormity of licentious opulence, and the foul depravity which never
fails to characterise the misery that follows the steps of luxury,
operate powerfully in the way of reaction to exacerbate the motives and
to swell the excesses of the ascetic life, when once that mode of
religion has been called into being. If the "powers of the world to
come" are vividly felt by those who renounce sensual pleasure, the vigor
of their self-denial, and the firmness of their resolution in adhering
to their rule, will commonly bear proportion to the depth of the
surrounding profligacy. Nothing could more effectually starve this
species of enthusiasm in any country in which it appeared to be growing,
than to elevate public morals. The exaggerated virtue of the monastery
can hardly subsist in the near neighborhood of the genuine virtue of
domestic life; nor will religious celibacy be in high esteem among a
people who regard adultery, not less than murder and theft, as a crime,
and with whom fornication is the cloaked vice only of a few. But in
Syria and the neighboring countries, at the time when the monastic life
took its rise, the most shameless dissoluteness of manners prevailed,
and prevailed to a degree that has rarely been exceeded; and there is
reason to believe that the early establishments of the Essenes were, in
a great measure, peopled by those who, having imbibed the love of virtue
from Moses and the prophets, fled, almost by necessity, from a world in
which the practice of temperance and purity had become scarcely
possible. In after times, the corruption of the great cities, in a
similar manner, contributed to fill the monastic houses. The evidence of
Josephus (often cited) though there may sometimes be traced in it a
little oratorical exaggeration, is sufficient to prove the existence of
a more than ordinary profligacy and ferocity among the Jews of his time.
This people, destitute of the restraining and refining influence of
philosophy and of elegant literature, which ameliorated the manners of
the surrounding nations, had been deprived, almost entirely, of all
salutary restraints from the divine law by the corrupt evasions of
rabbinical exposition. At the same time, the keen disappointment of the
national hope of universal dominion under the Messiah, exasperated their
native pride to madness.
A large indulgence, to say no more, is therefore due to those ardent,
but feeble-minded persons, who, untaught by an experiment of the danger
they incurred, fell into the specious error of supposing that a just
solicitude for the preservation of personal virtue might excuse their
withdrawment from the duties of common life; and the more so as they
were willing to purchase a discharge from its claims by resigning their
share of its lawful delights. The Christian recluses fled from scenes in
which, as they believed, purity could not breathe, to solitudes where
(though no doubt they found themselves mistaken) they supposed it would
flourish spontaneously. And in truth, though it must be much more
difficult to live virtuously under the provoking restraints of monastic
vows, than amid the allowed enjoyments of domestic life, refined by
Christianity, there may be room to question whether the balance might
not really be in favor of the monastery, when the only alternative was
an abode with the most extreme profligacy.
So natural to young and ardent minds, under the first fervors of
religious feeling, is the wish to run far from the sight and hearing of
seductive pleasure, and so plausibly may such a design recommend itself
to the simple and sincere, that, even in our own times, if by any means
the general opinion of the Christian church could be brought round to
favor, or to allow, the practice of monastic seclusion, and if, instead
of being on all sides reprobated and ridiculed, it were permitted,
encouraged, and admired, the conjecture may be hazarded, that an
instantaneous rush from all our religious communities would take place,
and a host of the ardent, the imaginative, the melancholic; not to
mention the disappointed, the splenetic, and the fanatical, would
abandon the domestic circle, and the scenes of business, to people
sanctuaries of celibacy and prayer in every sequestered valley of our
island.[4]
* * * * *
Besides the ordinary miseries of frequent war, and of a foreign
domination, which afflicted, more or less, the other provinces of the
Roman empire, the existence, among the Jews, of a species of fanaticism
perfectly unparalleled, allowed the Syrian Palestine to taste very
imperfectly, the benefit of temperate and vigorous rule. The intractable
and malign infatuation of that people had so baffled the wisdom of the
Roman government, and had so disturbed its wonted equanimity, as to
compel it to treat the unhappy Judea with unmeasured severity. Or if
respite were enjoyed from military inflictions, the brutal violences of
their own princes, or the atrocities perpetrated by demagogues, kept
constantly alive the brand of public and private discord. During such
times of insecurity and wretchedness, it is usual for the passive
portion of the community to sink into a state, either of reckless
sensuality, or of pining despondency. But if, in this class, there are
those who have received the consoling hope of a bright and peaceful
immortality, it is only natural that, when hunted from every earthly
comfort by violence and extortion, they should look wistfully at the
grave, and long to rest where "the wicked cease from troubling." In this
state of mind it cannot be deemed strange that, upon the first smile of
opportunity, they should hasten away from scenes of blood and wrong, and
anticipate the wished-for release from life, by hiding themselves in
caverns and in deserts.
The most frightful solitude might well appear a paradise, and the most
extreme privation be thought luxurious, to those who, in their retreat,
felt at length safe from an encounter with man, who, when savage, is by
far the most terrible of all savage animals. Such were the causes which
had driven multitudes of the well-disposed among the Jews into the
wilderness. The severities of persecution afterwards produced the same
effect on the Christians; and first on those of Syria and Egypt. This
effect is well known to have resulted from the Decian persecution, and
probably also from those that preceded it. Little blame can be
attributed to Christians who, in such times fled from cities, and took
refuge in solitudes; unless, indeed, by so doing they abandoned those
whom they ought to have defended.
So long as he could wander unmolested over the pathless mountain track,
or exist in the arid desert, the timid follower of Christ not only
avoided torture or violent death, but escaped what he dreaded more—the
hazard of apostacy under extreme trial. Having once effected his
retreat, and borne for a time the loss of friends and comforts, he soon
acquired physical habits and intellectual tastes which rendered a life
in the wilderness not only tolerable but agreeable. To the fearful and
inert, safety and rest are the prime ingredients of happiness, and, if
absolute, they go far towards constituting a heaven upon earth.
In the utter solitude of the desert, or in the mitigated seclusion of
the monastery, a large proportion probably, of the recluses, soon
drooped into the inanity of trivial pietism: a few, perhaps, after the
first excitement failed, bit their chain, from day to day, to the end of
life: or wrung a wretched solace from concealed vices. But those who, by
vigor of mind, supported better the preying of the soul upon itself,
could do no otherwise than exchange the simple and affectionate piety
with which, perhaps they entered the wilderness, for some form of
visionary religion.[5] To maintain, unbent, the rectitude of sound
reason, and unsullied, the propriety of sound feelings, in solitude, is
an achievement, which, it may confidently be affirmed, surpasses the
powers of human nature. Good sense, never the product of a single mind,
is the fruit of intercourse and collision.
* * * * *
When the several circumstances above mentioned are duly considered, they
will remove from candid minds almost every sensation of asperity or of
contemptuous reprobation, towards those who, in their day of defective
knowledge, became the victims, or even the zealous supporters of the
prevalent enthusiasm. We have done, then, with the parties in these
scenes of delusion and folly; or at least with those of them who were
sincere in their error. But when we turn to the system itself, and gain
that license which charity herself may grant, while an abstraction only
is under contemplation, we must remember that this monkery, so innocent
in its commencement, and so plausible in its progress, was the chief
means of destroying the spiritual reality of Christianity, and ought to
be deemed the principle cause of that gross darkness which hung over the
church during more than a thousand years.
[4] This conjecture, hazarded in 1829, would seem now to be not unlikely
to be, to some extent, realized.
[5] The errors and extravagances generated by the monastic life did not
ordinarily extend to the fundamental principles of Christianity. The
monks were, for the most part, zealously attached to the doctrine of the
Nicene creed; and the church owes to many of them its thanks for the
constancy with which they suffered in its defence.