austerity, was also the importance attached by Mohammed to

The idea of future expiatory torments having lodged itself alms-giving-almost the only positive virtue of his system. firmly in all serious and devout minds, no other conseThe aspirant to immortal sensualities could not indeed every quence could be looked for but the practice of penitentiary day wet his sword in the blood of infidels; but he might at inflictions, having for their motive the hope of abating the all times purchase, if not always conquer for himself the future demands of justice in the region of chastisement. The most pleasures. Or if the system still seemed to want a vent for excessive abstinence, a shirt of haircloth, a bed of straw, conthose feelings which give rise to ascetic practices, it was tinued watchings, perpetual silence, sanguinary flagellations, found in the rigour and universal obligation of the annual fast, and positive tortures, were willngly resorted to as assuagewhich afforded to every Moslem such a taste of mortification ments of the dread which the belief of purgatory inspired; as might effectively cool the ambition of voluntary hunger. and if we are to wonder at all in looking at these severities, The frantic austerities of the Dervish did not spring out of our amazement must be, not that men could be found who the Mohammedan theology; but either grew upon it; or have were willing to submit heartily and permanently to the rule been merely farcical and mercenary; or have been practised of St. Benedict, or St. Dominic; but rather that the miseries in continuation of idolatrous usages which the faith of the of the monastic life were not carried to a much greater extent Prophet did not extirpate.* than we actually find them ordinarily to have reached. It The Roman Superstition embraced many more elements of would not have seemed strange if sincere believers in the meditative emotion, and those of a more profound sort than doctrine of purgatory had gone the length of the ancient were included in the Koran. Although if we are to speak of worshippers of Baal, or of the modern devotees of Indian it as a whole, and especially if we have in view its condition divinities.*

in the eighth and ninth centuries, Popery was a more corrupt It is in the glare of a doctrine such as this that we should system than that of the Arabian prophet, so that Mohammed peruse the rules of the ascetic life, and the blood-stained and the Caliphs may almost claim the praise of religious Re-story of the monastery. Is it any wonder that men who first formers; yet did it retain those potent principles of hope and had tortured themselves at the instigation of this belief should fear--of remorse and compunction, of tenderness too, and of think it a light matter to ply the rack and the brand upon keen sensibility, which put the soul into deep commotion, others ?-The fanaticism of austerity was proper parent of the and set it working upon itself. On the contrary, Mohammed, fanaticism of cruelty. But the mild and meditative spirit of by strangely admitting into his theology the expectation of a Cristianity happily came in to moderate, in some degree, that sensual paradise, the pleasures of which were not to differ in extravagance into which the human mind naturally runs when substance from the delights of an oriental palace, effectively highly excited by a ferocious theology.-The Christian flacashiered from his system every pure and spiritual concep- gellist might, it is probable, draw as much blood from his tion of virtue. For if the heaven which a man is thinking of as back in a year, as did the frantic priest of Moloch from his his last home be grossly voluptuous, of what avail will be sides and arms;-or perhaps more; but yet it were better fine abstract axioms or grave discourses to teach him purity. done with the scourge than with the knife. The Romish No perversion such as this ever gained ground among fanaticism did not rise to a horrid and murderous pitch until Christian nations, even in their lowest state of religious de-after it had become the instrument of sacerdotal rancour, and gradation. And as some spiritual conceptions of the Divine had been directed against the heretic. character, as well as some just notions of the sanctity of the The derivation of fanatical cruelty from fanatical austerity upper world were generally prevalent, the correspondent be- it is by no means difficult to trace; nor is the line of descent lief of the guilt and danger of man as a sinner retained its far extended. Often indeed has the one generated the other force. Nevertheless as, at the same time, the genuine and in the same bosom; or if the history of the Church is looked evangelic scheme of remission of sins, was nullified, or quite to, it will be seen that, within the circuit of a century, or forgotten, the tormented conscience was left to contend as it could with the dread of future retribution.

it, stand forth almost in the grossest form in the writings of Gregory The doctrine of Purgatory sprang up naturally in the bo- the Christian Pope, on this subject, and that of his contemporarythe Great; and it would be really hard to choose between the faith of soms of men from this mortal conflict of fear and conscious Mohammed ;-both announcing eternal damnation as the doom of guilt, with the obscure hope of impunity; and although the the uninstructed mass of mankind; and both preaching a purgatorial "fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no war-state to those whose religious advantages were of the highest kind. ranty of Scripture," may be traced in its elements to very Assuredly the Koran is more free from suspicion of a sinister purpose early times, and although it became at length, in its practical dialogues can be trusted to as the unaltered productions of the writer on this point than are the Dialogues of Gregory:-if indeed these bearing, a device well adapted to serve the purposes of a ra- to whom they are attributed-or are his productions at all—a point pacious priesthood, it should be regarded, in its essence, as deemed questionable. nothing more than the proper product of elevated and spiritual A service perhaps might be rendered to sincere and candid Ronotions of virtue, cut off from that solace which the Gospel affords. Some opinion equivalent to the doctrine of purgatory, has been seen, even in our own times, to be associated with the two conditions, namely-a damaged Gospel, and severe morality.

a

manists if the history of this doctrine-a capital article in his belief, and one which he knows to be of high antiquity, could be satisfactorly traced. Our materials, it is to be feared, are too scanty to sustain the Cyprian or Tertullian, more is wanted than actually exists to enable inquiry; for between the close of the apostolic age and the time of us to give a good account of the state of the opinion as we find it in It belongs to another subject, namely SUPERSTITION, to the pages of those two writers. The expression so often quoted by trace the origin and growth of the doctrine of Purgatory. the Romanists, from Tetullian,-Oblationes pro defunctis, pro This ancient and widely-diffused dogma went hand in hand natalitiis annua die facimus (de Corona) is not of itself conclusive; with that which led to the invocation of saints, and the belief but becomes so as compared with other passages. Dic mihi soror, in of their efficient intercession in the court of heaven. The pace præmisisti virum tuum? Quid respondebit? An in discordia? Ergo hoc magis ei vincta est, cum quo habet apud Deum causam. latter doctrine seems to have been ripened, or to have reached a Enimvero et pro anima ejus orat, et refrigerium interim adpostulat definite form rather earlier than the former; nor is the mode ei, et in prima resurrectione consortium, et offert annuis diebus of its birth quite so obscure. When at length both had be- dormitionis ejus. (De Monogam). Every one has seen quotations come the accredited doctrine of the church, a brisk commerce to the same effect from Cyprian, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Cyril of between the visible and invisible worlds was carried on, and Jerusalem. But in these, and similar instances, the true import of in this traffic the clergy were the brokers and the gainers-on those topics which are most nearly allied to the opinion in quescertain phrases is to be gathered from each writer's general strain the gainers to an incalculable amount.‡

tion: especially on the subject of repentance and remission of sins. The doctrine of purgatory, it is pretty evident, sprang out of an early corruption of those principal articles. Here we find a confusion of notions, and a perverted exposition of Scripture, in almost the earliest of the Christian writers.

Sooffeeism, with its varieties, is a far more ancient and a more widely spread system than the doctrine of the prophet. The philosophie pantheist of Persia and Upper India, the frantic fakir, and the dervish, are personages of all times, and of almost all countries.- * The Romish writers use no reserve in describing the pains of The ascetic tribe is older than history, and presents the same gen- the purgatorial state; and as they have, in the doctrine itself, supplied eral features wherever we meet with it. In reading Arrian's account to the Church an article on which Scripture is silent; so, in furnishof the Bramins, or Sophists, as he calls them, of India, one might|ing the particulars, have they drawn largely upon that special knowbelieve he was describing so many Romish saints. Our uura ledge of the infernal regions which their privileged commerce with JIRITÈNTAI ÛÌ COQ107ai, (Indian Hist.). The Koran neither created invisibles has supplied." A soul," says the Rev. Alban Butler, "for nor cherished infatuations of this kind. one venial sin shall suffer more than all the pains of distempers, the

+ The contemplative or more refined class of Moslems have stre- most violent colics, gout, and stone, joined in complication; more nuously endeavoured to put a figurative construction upon those than all the most cruel torments undergone by malefactors, or inpassages of the Koran which describe Paradise, and have maintained vented by the most barbarous tyrants; more than all the tortures of that the prophet never intended to be literally understood. The the martyrs summed up together. This is the idea which the fathers mass of his followers have taken things as they found them. give us of purgatory, and how long many souls may have to suffer

Not only the doctrine of Purgatory, but the practical abuses of there we know not."-Lives of the Saints, Novem. 2.

more, those outrages upon human nature which had been go-rescue a good and accomplished man from the suffocating ing on in the cells of the monastery, and those preposterous embrace of his eulogist. Well might a warning be taken by sentiments which the ascetic life enkindled, reached their the Church, even now, against the danger of indulging the proper consummation when the friar and inquisitor took in spirit of exaggeration and of fond adulatory regard to the hand to rid the church of her enemies. Far was any such illustrious dead. It was this very spirit as much as any other consequence from the minds of the early and illustrious pro-influence we can name, which effected the ruin and hastened moters of the monastic system; but though not foreseen by the corruption of early Christianity. Hence, directly, sprang them, it demands to be attentively regarded by us, since the some of the very worst errors which in a matured state instruction which history conveys is drawn from considering, strengthened the despotism of Rome, and made its services rather the commencements than the issues, rather the germs idolatrous, and its practices abominable. than the fruits, of whatever excites admiration or surprise. A reasonable distaste of the inflation which offends the eye upon the stage of the world's affairs. so often on the pages of the early Christian writers (as well

And so, if it be intended to receive in the most efficacious as motives of indolence or levity) has almost cut us off from manner those lessons of practical wisdom which spring from correspondence with the worthies of the ancient Church; so the contemplation of individual character, we must select as that men whose vigour of mind, whose copious eloquence, specimens, not the most distorted instances, but those rather and whose universal learning, should attract us to the perusal wherein the peculiar tendency we have in view is moderated of their works, are little more thought of than the demigods by fine qualities of the heart, or lost almost amid the splen- of the Grecian mythology. Yet undoubtedly by this oblidour of rare mental powers and accomplishments.-For inas-vion we not only forfeit the advantage of justly estimating much as it is only when so recommended that spurious vir- things that are, by comparison with things that have been; tues produce extensive ill effects, our caution against the evil but fail of that special and highly important benefit which an should be drawn from examples of that very order. Let the exact knowledge of history conveys, namely—a timely causardonic historian, whose rule it is to exhibit humán nature tion against the first inroads of insidious errors and spurious always as an object of mockery, crowd his pages with what-sentiments.

ever is most preposterous in its kind. A better motive will It may be too much to affirm that Basil, eminent as were lead us to bring forward the worthiest exemplars; and yet his qualities, or indeed that any single mind could have turnnot as if the illustrious dead were to be exhibited that it might ed the tide which, at the opening of the fourth century, was be said of them how little were the great! but rather that the in full course, bearing the Christian world-eastern and westadmonition, of whatever kind, which the instance presents ern, fast toward that swamp of superstition wherein all its may come with the fullest force. virtues were soon after lost. Yet it is certain that although

Forgetting then the frenzied anchorets of the Egyptian he might not have had power to divert the course of things, deserts, of the rocks of Sinai, and of the solitudes of Syria, his influence was great and extensive in accelerating the unand leaving unnamed the savage heroes of the Romish calen-happy movement. As well in the Latin as the Greek Church, dar, let us take an instance in which a due admiration of and during many successive centuries, the writings of Basil great qualities must mingle with our reprobation of mischie- formed the text book of monkery, and gave sanction to its vous sentiments. Instead of a St. Symeon, or a St. Colum- follies.* His friend and biographer assures us, and his own ban, we turn to Basil-the primate of Cappadocia.t writings attest the fact, that, not like many who, so long as But how obtain the simple and living truth in the instance their private interests go well, trouble themselves not at all we have chosen? Nothing belonging to that age in which on account of the evils that may prevail abroad, Basil anx the Church ascended to the place of worldly greatness is to iously occupied himself with whatever concerned the welfare be found in its native form and real colours. Flattery and of the Christian community throughout the world:† and seeclerical arrogance confound all distinctions, violate all mod-ing the Church" split into ten thousand sects, and distracted esty, and in the interested idolatry of human excellence, com- with errors," laboured, as well by his writings as by permit frightful outrages upon the just rules of piety. Those sonal interposition, to remedy the existing evils. Nor were calumniators of his friend and patron against whom Gregory his labours without fruit. The specific heresies with which Nazianzen inveighs,‡ could not have injured the true frame he contended were held in check by his eloquence, and by of Basil so fatally as himself has done by his hyperbolic en- the weight of his personal character. False dogmas he discomiums. We turn as well with suspicion as disgust from cerned, and refuted; but alas, the false temper of the timesthe turgid oration, and are fain to relinquish the attempt to the universal wrong tendency of men's notions of religion and piety, this he did not discern; on the contrary, while fight *No literary enterprise can well be named, or perhaps thought of ing with errors in the detail, himself immensely promoted the feeling of self-respect, than that which the worthy and learned au- and nineteenth orations, and in various places of his Epistles. Could more undesirable-more humiliating at least if a man retains any grand error which had already poisoned the Church, and thor of the Lives of the Saints has executed. The Romish Church the simplicity of the Gospel, and the honour of Christ comport with is rich in the boast of upwards of a thousand saints-a number so that style of adulation which in the age of Gregory was accredited large that she is able to allot as many as three or four glorious pa- and common in the Church? The epistle, the nineteenth, in which trons, on an average, to each day of the year! Now most men would he excuses himself from the charge of neglecting his friend, would think it a formidable task to undertake merely a cold apology of astound the modern reader. No wonder that those should have fall

every one of any thousand frail human beings that could be brought together in a list. But what must it be, not simply to excuse, but toen into an idolatry of the saints in heaven, who had already goue so commend every one of a thousand? And what, not only to com- far in worshipping one another. mend, but to find proof that every one is a fit object of adoration, and The praises of Basil and of his institutions are on the lips of an efficacious mediator between God and man? Yet such is the most of the contemporary and succeeding church writers, as well achievement that signalizes the name of Alban Butler! A thousand Latins as Greeks; and most of the oriental monkish establishments saints, one after another, to be hoisted upon the pedestal of canoni-were founded upon the model of which he was the author. Isidore, zation, or defended there! Truly one of the loftiest of these envia-(Lib. I. Epist. 61,) reproaches one who, while he professed high reble standing places should be reserved for the anthor himself! gard to the words of our DIVINELY INSPIRED FATHER-Basil, practiThose who, without a cause to serve, or a church to prop (or to pull cally set his authority at naught. Equivalent expressions are emdown), look calmly at human nature as it is, and who read history ployed by other writers. By a strange catachresis the monastic rule for themselves, will, with a sort of mournful contempt, bring into was called generally by the writers of that age (as by Isidore in the comparison the foolish exaggerations of Butler on the one hand, and epistle here referred to) zarur scias, and the institution itself the malign representations of Gibbon on the other; and will learn to the true and divine philosophy. See a fond and frequent use of this hold very cheap, as well eulogists as calumniators, when it is truth phrase in the epistles of Gregory Nazianzen. we are in search of.

† ... ἀλλ' ὑψοῦ τὴν κεφαλὴν διάρας, καὶ κύκλω τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς όμμα + Let ninety-nine of every hundred of the Saints of the Calendar περιαγαγών, πᾶσαν εἴσω ποιεῖται τὴν οἰκουμένην, ὅσων ὁ σωτήριος λόγος retain their title. If the Romanists please; it shall be Saint George, ipar. Greg. Naz. Orat. 20. Ilis assertion is borne out by seve Saint Dunstan, Saint Dominic, and so forth; but we are disposed eral passages in Basil's own writings, from which it appears that the to withhold the sullied honour from the few whom we believe, not-state of the Church universal was the subject of his frequent (and not withstanding the misfortune of their canonization, to have been good very happy) meditations: for instance, in his treatise on the Holy and honest men, and sincere Christians. And certainly we so think Spirit, c. 30, where, with admirable force of language and vigour of Basil of Cappadocia. He governed the churches of that province of conception, he makes a comparison between the distracted state rather more than eight years, during the reigns of Valentinian and of the Church and a sea-fight during a storm: or again in that re markable epistle to the bishops of the West, in which he entreats See the funeral oration in praise of Basil, Morell's Greg. Nazi-them to send delegates to the eastern church, who might raise it from anzen, 1680, Tom. I. pp. 360, 363. the dust. The same catholic and patriarchal solicitude appears in The twentieth oration above referred to, rags, in which his epistles to Athanasius, and in those of similar import, to the Gregory exhausts the powers of language in the service of his de-bishops of Gaul and Italy. Basil's monasticism did not at all seclude ceased friend and spiritual father, upon whom indeed, while living him from public interests. he had lavished the hyperpolas of praise; as in the sixth, seventh,

Valens.

... εἰς τε μυρίας δόξας και πλάνας διεσπασμένον.

which, after a century or two, laid her prostrate as a corrupt- cilable with high attainments in piety.*-That Religion-or ing carcase. So it is that what is special we can see what at least that the only admirable order of religion, consistsis general escapes our notice. A hundred times, while fol- not in the worthy and fruitful exercise of virtuous principles lowing Basil through his track of cogent argument and splen- amid the occasions and trials of common life; but in cutting did illustration, one stops to ask, Why did not so compre-off all opportunities of exercise, and in retreating from every hensive and penetrating an intelligence question itself, and trial of constancy:-That, in a word, piety is a something question the Christian body, concerning the soundness of its which in every sense is foreign to the present state, and can first principles of practical piety? Why not inquire whether flourish only in proportion as its laws and constitutions are a system of conduct manifestly at variance with the course contemned and discarded.

of nature, and with the constitutions of the social economy, The first practical measure necessary for giving effect to was indeed enjoined by Scripture, or could, in its issue, be maxims such as these, was of course that of breaking up the safe and advantageous? Not a surmise of this sort, so far conjugal economy, and of gathering men and women (destined as we can find, ever disturbed the meditations of the Cappa- by God for each other as sharers in the joys of life, and helpdocian primate. No;-but these only may fairly blame and ers in its labours and sorrows) into horrid fraternities and wonder who themselves are habituated to entertain and in- comfortless sisterhood of virginity. This violence once dulge severe inquiries concerning the opinions and usages done to nature-and then every lesser enormity was only a they most zealously affect. proper consequence and a consistent part of the monstrous Far from seeming fanatical or malignant, the monastic invention. All fanaticism-all cruelties, all impurities were system, as it stands on the shining pages of Basil, bears in embryo within this egg. Strange does it seem-or quite a seductive form. His discriptions of his own seclu- strange to us of this age, that the authors and prompters of sion among the mountains of Pontus, and of the pleasures of the unnatural usage, while reading the evangelic records, did abstracted meditation and holy exercise, can hardly be read not see that the virtue of our Lord and of his Apostles, if we without kindling an enthusiasm of the same order.* In his are not to think it quite inferior to that of which the monks ascetic rules, too, there is very much of admirable and elevated made their boast, was altogether unlike it, and must have sentiment, and of spiritual discretion; as well as a thorough been founded on different maxims. Of our Lord it is said orthodoxy. More easy is it to yield the heart and judgment that he was continually accompanied in his journeys by woto the persuasive influence of the writer, than to stand aloof, men who "ministered unto him." But the doctors of monkand call in question his principles. ery assure us that the society of woman is altogether perni

Nor perhaps, apart from the aid of that comment which the cious, and wholly incompatible with advancement in the after history of the Church has made upon those principles, Christian life;-yes, that the mere touch of a female hand is would it have been easy to demonstrate their pernicious ten-mortal to sanctity! The sanctity of the monk, then, and dency: and yet there is little or nothing among the enormi- the purity of the Son of God had not, it is manifest, any kinties of the ascetic life which might not be justified on the dred elements.-Of the Apostles and first disciples it is said grounds assumed by Basil; as for example, That the domes- that they consorted together" with the women," and throughtic constitution of man is abstractedly imperfect, and irrecon-out the history of the Acts nothing appears to have attached to the manners of Christians that was at variance with the of a virtuous intercourse of the sexes. genuine simplicity and innocence which is the characteristic described and lauded by every Father, from Tertullian, to the The "angelic life," Abbot of Clairvaux, is not any where to be traced in the au

It was customary with the monks of a later age to select for the site of their establishments the most horrid and pestilential swamps, and this professedly with the intention of mortifying the senses, and of rendering life as undesirable and as brief too as possible. Not so Basil: fully alive to the beauties of nature, he exults in his enjoyment of them. The following description, though perhaps too long for a * Throughout the ascetic writings of Basil every thing commendnote, tempts us to turn aside a moment from our path. Addressing able or desirable in the spiritual economy is assumed to attach the friend of his youth, Basil says-In Pontus God hath shown me a exclusively to that mode of life which could be followed only in the spot precisely situated to my turn of mind and habits. In truth it is monastery; nor does he think it practicable to maintain faith and the very scene which heretofore, while idly musing I had been wont virtue in the open world, or while encompassed with the cares and to picture to myself. It is a lofty mountain, enveloped in dense duties Toxovo Bov. Not so Paul and Peter. In a letter to his forests: on its nothern front it is watered by gelid streams that friend Gregory Nazianzen, after describing the distractions of ordisparkle to the eye as they descend. At the foot of the hill a grassy nary life, and the cares of matrimony, he says-From all which there plain spreads itself out, and luxuriates in the moisture that distils is only one way of escape-namely, an entire separation from this perpetually from the heights. Around the level space the woods, world:-not indeed a being absent from it corporeally; but a rending presenting trees of every species, take an easy sweep, so as to form a of the soul from every bodily affection;-to be no citizen-to have natural rampart. Calypso's isle, so much praised by Homer, one no home-no property-no friends-to be destitute, and in absolute might contemn in comparison with this spot in fact itself might want to have no concerns or occupation-to be cut off from almost be called an island, since it is completely encircled and shut commerce with the world-to be ignorant of human learning;-and in on two sides, by deep and precipitous ravines; on another, by so to prepare the heart for the due reception of the divine instruction. the fall of a never-failing torrent, not easily forded, and which like a Such were the principles which this good man diffused throughout the wall excludes intruders. In the rear the jagged and uneven heights, Christian world-himself did by no means carry them out fully into with a semicircular turn, rise from the skirts of the plain, and deny practice-this part was left for his admirers. So it is that great access, except through a single pass, of which we are masters. My minds indulge in exaggerations which small minds interpret literally habitation occupies the ridge of a towering height, whence the land-to their cost. It would be useless to quote fifty passages of like scape, with the many bends of the river, spreads itself fairly to the import-a hundred might be found. view, and presents, altogether a prospect not inferior, as I think, in The author of the Lives of the Saints would fain rid the repugay attractions, to that which is offered by the course of the river tation of St. Basil of the ambiguous honour of having written the Strymon, as seen from Amphipolis. That stream indeed moves so tract on Virginity. If there be a doubt on this point, we will assuredly sluggishly in its bed, as hardly to deserve the name of river; but give the Archbishop and the Monk of Cæsarea the benefit of it. this on the contrary (the most rapid I have ever seen) rushes on to Whether it be his or not, the doctrine it mantains is in substance, a neighbouring rock, whence thrown off, it tumbles into a deep vortex though not in so unpleasing a form, found in his unquestioned wriin a manner that excites the admiration of every beholder. From the tings. The passages that might the most aptly be quoted in this inreservoir thus formed we are abundantly supplied with water, nor only stance, are best left in their concealment of Greek. so, for it nourishes in its stormy bosom a multitude of fishes. What The subject of celibacy, and its influence on the character, must might I not say of the balmy exhalations that arise from this verdant again, and more copiously be treated. See next section. region, or of the breezes that attend the flow of the river? or some We turn for a moment from Basil, who nevertheless is strong perhaps would rather speak of the endless variety of flowers that on this point. "So far as possible," says Isidore, "all converse adorn the ground, or of the innumerable singing birds that make our with women is to be shunned: or if this cannot altogether be woods their home. For my own part, my mind is too deeply avoided, they should be spoken with only, the eye fixed on the engaged to give much attention to these lesser matters. To our earth...... In the case of almost all who have fallen by their means commendation of this seclusion we are moreover able to add the death hath entered in by the windows!" Lib. I. Epis. 67. Cassian, praise of an unbounded fruitfulness in all kinds of produce, favoured and still more, his commentators, might be quoted at large on matas it is by its position and soil. To me its principal charm (and a ters of this sort. Gregory the Great says-Qui corpus suum contigreater cannot be) is this-that it yields me the fruits of tranquillity. nentia dedicant, habitare cum feminis non presumant; and he tells a For not only is the region far remote from the tumult of cities, but it long story to enforce his advice. Dialog. Lib. III. c. 7. Sulpitius is actually unfrequented by travellers of any sort, a few huntsmen Severus thinks it necessary to excuse his hero, St. Martin, in an excepted, who make their way hither in search of the game which instance (referred to in Nat. Hist. of Enthus. Sect. IX.) in which he abounds in it. This indeed is another of its advantages; for though had suffered the touch of a woman: and in the same spirit, an unwe lack the ferocious bear and the wolf that afflict your country, we known monkish writerhave deer and goats, sylvan flocks, and hares, and other animals of

the sort.....

Who would not turn monk if he might lead the angelic life in a paradise such as that of Basil ?

Causa gravis scelerum cessabit amor mulierum,
Colloquium quarum nil est nisi virus amarum
Præbens, sub mellis dulcedine, pocula fellis.
Carman Paræneticum.

thentic story of the first and purest years of the Christian In-celestial dignity, as the distinction of a few. Thus was it stitution. Why was not a fact so conspicuous perceived by that all the stones of the foundation of the pandemonium of Chrysostom, by Gregory, by Basil? Alas! such is the orig-pride, impurity, and cruelty, were laid by the hands of men inal limitation, or such the superinduced infatuation of the whom we must venerate and admire. human mind, that, when once it takes a wrong path, not the The most benign in its elements, and yet perhaps the most most eminent powers of reason, nor the most extensive ac-destructive in its actual consequences, of all the forms of facomplishments avail to give it a suspicion of its error! naticism (under this general head) remains to be mentioned; All that could be done by a vigorous and comprehensive -we mean the custom of pilgrimage. What enterprise can mind, well furnished with Scriptural principles, to render the seem more innocent than that of a journey to gratify the tranmonastic institution as good as its nature admitted, was ac-quil yearnings of pious affection toward a sacred spot?-But tually effected by Basil;* and his ascetic writings-his what usage more fatal, if we look at its products through a Rules, the longer and the shorter, and his monastic constitu- course of ages? Well may it be questioned whether the most tions, if they could, in translation, be purged of their charac-ferocious of the ancient superstitions ever made such havoc teristic asceticism, would form an excellent and edifying body of human life as have the tranquil pilgrimages of the eastern of instructions in the practice of piety.-But our time and and western nations. Even the merciless military executions labour might be better spent. Happily the principles and perpetrated by zealot kings upon their own subjects at the maxims of religion we can draw from purer sources; and instigation of friar-confessors, have probably not caused more while it is unquestionably incumbent upon the few who aspire death and misery than pilgrimage has occasioned. The reader to exercise a correct and comprehensive judgment concerning might startle perhaps to hear it affirmed that, looking only to the varions phrases of Christianity, to make themselves fa- modern times, the wars that have raged in different parts of Eumiliarly conversant with the voluminous remains of ecclesi- rope and Asia have not wasted the human species to a greater astical literature, it is certain that the private Christian, with amount than the noiseless processions that, during the same the Bible and with modern expositions in his hand, need not era, have been streaming toward the centries of Brahminical, sigh that those treasures are locked up from his use. Mohammedan, and Romish superstition. In its rancorous stage the fanaticism of austerity is not to Travel by sea and land-the latter not less than the former, be looked for in a writer so great and good as the Bishop of does indeed include a hundred chances of death unknown to Cæsarea. For instances of this we must turn to some of his the resident portion of mankind. But journeys prompted by contemporaries of less note; and to those who afterwards motives of religion seem to invite and concentrate every ill followed in the same track. Nevertheless the germs of ma- chance that can possibly belong to a passage from country to lignant religionism (such as in a preceding section we have country. Among the many routes beaten by the foot of man, briefly stated them to be) are not wanting even in Basil. It which catch the eye as we look broadly over the earth's sur is evident, for example, that the very serious impressions he face, if there be one that stares out from the landscapeentertained of the Divine Justice, and its bearing upon man, whitened with bones, we shall always find it terminate at were not balanced, as in the minds of the apostles, by a clear some holy shrine. A spot made important by nothing but and auspicious understanding of the great article of justifica- the dreams of superstition, has become, by the accumulated tion by faith-his faith therefore was comfortless, severe, mortality of ages, the very Golgotha of a continent; and death and dim. Again, the scriptural belief of the agency and has fitly erected his proudest trophies on the paths that have malice of infernal spirits, had become, in that age, and before led to the place of a sepulchre.

it, so turgid and extravagant that it filled a far larger space Besides other, and incidental reasons of the difference, it is on the circle of vision than properly belongs to it. In truth, enough to say that, while men are engaged in mercantile adamong the monks, the subject of infernal seduction quite oc- venture simply, and are acting upon the common inducecupied the mind, to the exclusion almost of happier objects ments of worldly interest, they naturally foresee dangers, and of meditation. The devil, whatever may be the title of the provide against them. But the train of pilgrimage, at first piece, is the real hero of the drama of monastic piety:-that mustered by Folly, has renounced as an impiety, the guid piety therefore has all the proper characters of superstition.+ance of reason, and hurrying onward, every day with a more Furthermore, the broad distinction made between what desperate haste than before, has at length poured itself as a was insolently termed "the common life," and the "angelic," torrent along the very valley of death.

if

or monastic, and upon which Basil so much insists, could It is hard to conjecture to what extent the mischief might not fail to generate, as in fact it did, a supercilious disdain of have reached-especially in those ages when the frenzy was the mass, not of mankind at large merely, but of the Chris- at its height, if it had not been checked by the saving adtian community, and with it, a preposterous conceit (ill con- mixture of grosser motives with the pure fanaticism which cealed beneath the cant of humility) of peculiar privilege and was its prime impulse. How greatly are we often indebted (if pride would but own it) to those whispered suggestions * Evidence might without difficulty be adduced to prove that the of common prudence which we should indignantly spurn monastic institution, such as it had become in the times of Basil, was they dared to utter themselves aloud! rather corrected and purified, than rendered still more extravagant wondrous complexity of human nature, provisions are made Yes, and in the by the influence of his writings. In his own age therefore (if the| fact be as we presume) he was a Reformer. His influence, on the for the clogging or diverting of every power that tends to run contrary, as extended though succeeding ages, has been to hold in up to a dangerous velocity. Religious delusion is in fact found credit a system which, but for the support of men like himself, must to coalesce readily, on the one side with soft sensualities, and soon have fallen under the general reprobation and contempt of on the other-strange amalgam!-with mercenary calculamankind. Remove from this institution what Basil, Chrysostom, tions. Oftener than can be told has pious heroism slid down Ambrose, Augustine, and Bernard did to sustain it, and not all by a rapid descent into sordid hypocrisy, and the stalking the exploits of a thousand fanatics could have availed to keep it devotee of yesterday has become to-day a sheer knave. Just going. The disorders, the corruption, and the religious feuds of the age so does a torrent tumble from crag to crag of the mountains, had evidently affected the mind of Basil in a manner not favourable and sparkle in the sun as it storms along;-until, reaching a to his dispositions. A genuine lover of solitude, he was a passion-level and a slimy bed, it takes up the impurity it finds-gets ate admirer of Ideal Perfection, and turned with alarm and distaste, sluggish as well as foul, and at length creeps silent through as well from the church as the world, in the actual state of both. Yet the oozy channels of a swamp.

his was a mind of the governing class. From public interests he

could not refrain ;-not his paradise in the depth of the wilderness The wan and wasted pilgrim-shall we call him devotee could hold him, when a sphere of power opened itself before him; or pedlar?-who left his home warm with genuine fervours, but he ascended the archiepiscopal throne an anchoret in heart, more unluckily for his reputation, discovered as he went, the secret even than in discipline and garb ;-might we say, an anchoret by of profitable adventure. Become dealer, either in articles of imaginative taste. the original incongruities of his character: seated in the place of of superstition-rags-bones-pebbles-splinters, he took his We regard his ascetic writings as the product of vulgar merchandize,* or, still better, in the inestimable wares power, he aimed not so much to govern the church-secular and actual; and as a Latin would have done, as to create or to mould a celestial course, barely knowing at length of what sort his errand was, community that should yield itself fully to his plastic hand. but actually reached his home a wealthy trader, who had At a very early time the belief of Christians, and especially of gone forth a crazy mendicant. The important effect howthe monks, concerning infernal agency, had assumed a form from ever of a transmutation of motives such as this, was to impart which nothing could follow but the follies and horrors of supersti- caution and forethought to the pilgrim enterprise; for it is a tion. A far extended and exact inquiry would be needed to place singular inconsistency of human nature that men will ordinathis subject in a just light. Though intimately connected with the rily take much more care of life for the sake of goods and rise and maturity of Fanaticism, it is too copious a theme to be entered upon in this volume. It demands, however, to be fully consid-property, than they will do of life by itself. If it had not ered if we would obtain a comprehensive and satisfactory understanding of the early corruption of Christianity.

See Robertson's Disquisition on India, sect. 3.

T

been for these mitigations, pilgrimage, during certain eras, quency of the visit, and the universality of the obligation, might almost have swallowed up the human race in the must have obviated the evils which attend the custom of pilcountries where chiefly the madness raged.* grimage. No danger, ordinarily, nor perilous adventure, and A portion only of this system of religious vagrancy belongs no extreme privations, could beset a journey of fifty-a hunto our immediate subject; for it is very far from being true dred, or a hundred and fifty miles, through a home-land, that all pilgrims have been fanatics. Some, as we have said, densely peopled; nor could any but the calmest and happiest should be reckoned mere traders, or hucksters under pretext sort of excitement spring up on an occasion which, instead of of religion; just as valiant knights were often freebooters, being a single and solemn act of a man's life, was the habit But the main circumstance of difference is this, under the same guise. Some, we cannot doubt, have been of his life. instigated mainly by that taste for adventure and love of rov- that the resort of the people to the tabernacle and temple, ing which, in certain bosoms is an irresistible impulse. Some, being a national duty, and a general or universal practice, it moreover, and not a few, have been flogged on, through their could never be made the ground of boasting or honour to inweary way, by pure superstitious terror, or by the well-dividuals, nor could be thought of as a meritorious enterprise, founded dread of the future retribution of their enormous by the aspirants to religious reputation. crimes. And lastly, we must except those (perhaps not The Mosaic institution seems to have set the habit of jourmany) whose motive may have been only a mild poetic en- neying in the Jewish character, and to have fixed it there so thusiasm, wholly free from virulence or gloomy fear, and not firmly and tranquilly, that in after ages, when the circumvery difficult to be conceived of, if we are ourselves at all stances of a visit to the "Holy City" were altogether altered, open to imaginative sentiments, and if we will surrender the and were such as might readily have kindled an active fanatifancy awhile to the seductive ideas that are called up by long cism, dangerous to the governments which allowed it, the meditation of a distant and hallowed region.† ancient devout serenity held its place in the feelings and manThere was a time-long gone by, when the streams of ners of the people of the dispersion. Those who, during the pilgrimage (if the anachronism of the phrase may be par- Persian, Macedonian and Roman cras (the early portion of it) doned) flowed from all points around the Mediterranean to- came to appear before the Lord from the remotest settlements ward the principal centres of philosophy, or of legislative of Libya, or Scythia, or India, went "from strength to strength" science. First India, or Chaldea, then Egypt, then Greece, with a feeling nearly the same as that of their happier ancestors, drew from all lands the votaries of wisdom. How marvel-whose journey lay only through the olive vales of Palestine. lously must the love of pure wisdom have declined since It is not until we approach the dark hour of the catastrophe those ages!-or else wisdom has become the produce of all of the city that we meet with the indications of a different climates. More nearly analogous to the pilgrimages of later spirit. Then indeed a frenzy had seized the obdurate race, times, though still very unlike them, was that widely ex-both at home and in the lands of its exile; and the resort of tended practice which brought every year multitudes of the the scattered nation to the ill-fated Jerusalem, was like the Greeks of all the settlements, even the most remote, and not rush of acrid humours to the heart and head of a delirious a few of the still more distant barbarians, to the oracular man. This season excepted, the Jewish pilgrimages to the temples of the mother country, or to those of Ionia and holy city were not, as it appears, marked by fanatical turbuEolia;-to Oropus, Aba, Dodona, Delphi. Yet although lence. The purpose of the worshippers was rational, and the errand in these cases was often a fruitless one, and the their religious notions were, in the main, of a substantial and belief whence it arose superstitious, the motive (had but the healthy sort;-they did not travel a thousand miles-to kiss premises been sound) was calm and rational, and not at all a stone, or to purchase a relic; but to take part in the services of the sort to kindle the imagination, or to disturb the pas- of that Temple where alone, in all the world, the first prinsions. Instruction, advice, or what perhaps might be equally ciples of theology were understood, and the true God adored. serviceable-a final decision on some perplexing occasion of The journey, and its attendant sentiments, were such as bepublic or private life, was needed, and sought for; and, whether fitted its object.

for the better or the worse, actually obtained from the minis- It is a preposterous creed that makes pilgrimage fatal. In ters of the mephitic cavern. Now it must be granted that an this case Delusion leads the way; Crime attends the route; authoritative determination (even supposing there to be an and Despair and Frenzy at the last comes up to urge the infatuequal chance of truth and error) might, in many an instance, ated troop toward the horrid spot where Misery and Death are well repay a journey of three hundred miles, or a voyage of to be glutted with victims. Such, in brief, and with circumfive. The common business of life, and the affairs of state stantial differences only, have been the pilgrimages that have too, were often much advantaged among the Greeks by their beaten the roads of India, of Arabia and of Palestine. To the appeals to what one might call a court of Chancery, in which latter, we should remember, is due the blood-stained glory of the god gave verdicts generally without delays-always with- giving birth to the Crusades; for if there had been no resort of the pious to the desolated sepulchre, there would probably out pleadings-and most often for moderate fees. We have yet to search for the pattern or the origin of the have been no heroes of the cross:-if no Peter the Hermit, practice of pilgrimage; but find resemblances rather than ac- no Tancred, no Godfrey, no Baldwin, or Richard! tual analogies. Such may be deemed, and it is not more Should we not in this place, note the fact that while suthan a resemblance, that usage of the Jewish people which perstition, as if with a power of fascination, has always been brought the male population of the country three times in the drawing men from extensive surfaces toward some one vortex year to the centre and only sanctioned place of public wor- of delusion, true religion, on the contrary, has shown itself ship. An auspicious institution-well adapted to diffuse, and to possess an expansive force, which has rendered it a point to keep in brisk circulation among a simple and agricultural of radiation, or an emanative centre, whence light and blesspeople, the several elements of social and religious prosperity.ings have flowed to the remotest circumference. Is a criteThen it is evident that the shortness of the distances, the fre- rion wanted which, by exterior facts only, might discriminate between a false and a true belief? little hazard would be run

* It was not merely as venders of relics, or of the productions of in assuming such a one as this-that the former will be seen the East, that the pilgrims found the means of refunding the expenses to be gathering up, and accumulating, and devouring;-while of their journey; for it appears to have been customary for them on the other spreads itself abroad, and scatters and diffuses, as their way home to perform sacred dramas in the streets and squares widely as it may, whatever benefits it has to confer. Chrisof the towns through which they passed. Ceux, says a French writer, tianity is not the religion of a shrine, of a sepulchre, of a qui revenoient de Jerusalem et de la Terre Sainte, &c. composoient des cantiques sur leurs voyages, y meloient le recit de chair, or of a den; but of all the broad ways of the world, and la vie et de la mort du Fils de Dieu, ou du Judgment dernier, d'une of every place where man is found. maniere grossiere, mais que le chant et la simplicite de ces temps la sembloient rendre pathetique Ces Pelerins qui alloient par troupes, et qui s'arretoient dans les rues et dans les places publiques ou ils chantoient le Bourdon a la main, le chapeau et le mantelet chargez de coquilles et d'images peintes de diverses couleurs, faisoient une espece de spectacle qui plut...

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE.

In treating of the Fanaticism of the SCOURGE, a passing

+ Quam dulce est peregrinis post multam longi itineris fatigatio- notice, at least, of the miserable Flagellants of the 13th and nem, post plurima, terræ marisque pericula, ibi tandam quiescere, 14th centuries, may be looked for. The pitiable frenzy, though ubi et agnoscunt suum Dominum, quievisse! Puto jam præ gaudio of fatal consequence for a time, and horribly suppressed, non sentiunt viæ laborem, noc gravamen reputant expensarum; sed does not seem to merit much attention either as a matter of tanquam laboris præmium, cursusve bravium (Spaßior) assecuti;

juxta Scripturæ sententiam, gaudent vehementer cum invenerint history or of philosophy. What has been handed down consepulcrum. (St. Bernard. Exhort. ad Milites Templi, cap. 11.) a cerning those dolorous vagrants, is familiar to most readers. tract we shall have occasion again, and more fully to refer to. See Froissart's account (Vol. ii. p. 263) relates to the last eruption of the Flagellants. "This year of our Lord 1349, there

Sect. VII.