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Prague with a solemnity approaching to superstition. Ita autem celebratur ejus memoria, ut ea res aliquid superstitionis mihi habere videatur.' It may be so; but if a little enthusiasm and superstition be pardonable in any case, it is in paying honours to those worthies, who were massacred by cruel bigots and by nominal Christians, and who acted or suffered in defence of liberty civil or religious-names far more venerable than one half of those which fill up the calendars and martyrologies. There is no great danger that protestants should ever run into such excess as to worship their heroes and martyrs.

Praying at the tombs of the martyrs was one of the fooleries which the Fathers should have restrained. What an idea did it give to weak Christians of the Almighty, who ought to be worshipped in spirit and in truth? As if He could be supposed to show more favour to a petition, because it was offered up at the place where a good man lay buried?

As the honours paid to the dead and to the reliques of the martyrs were set forward and supported, though not entirely, yet principally by the Consubstantialists, the Arians seem to have been rather less disposed to run into these puerilities. Faustus the Manichæan reproaches the Catholic Christians with their endless superstitions of this kind, and tells them that they were no better than humble imitators of Pagan idolaters.

What the Pagans said of their gods coming at certain times to visit their cities, the Christians afterwards said of their saints. See Valesius on Euseb. p. 445, 6.

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Juturna Nympha, quæ juvaret. Itaque multi ægroti propter id nomen, hinc aquam petere solent,' says Varro. For the same reason women big with child sacrificed to Egeria, quod eam putarent facile fœtum alvo egerere.' Festus.

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In like manner Christians have adored those saints whose names resembled their diseases, their wants, their trades, &c. See La Motthe Le Vayer, Hexam. Rustique, p. 136, &c. who banters these superstitions of those of his own communion.

The sufferings of the martyrs had another effect upon persons of more zeal than prudence, and of a fervid and

fanatical disposition. The times of martyrdom were over, and that sort of courage and constancy could not be exerted; and therefore pious people contrived a method of voluntary martyrdom, and inflicted upon themselves as many pains and penalties as Pagan cruelty had invented. They left parents, wives, children, friends, families, and fortunes; they retired from the world, they obliged themselves to a single and solitary life, they' allowed themselves no more food, raiment, and sleep, than would just keep body and soul together; and in these austerities, to do them justice, there was usually no dissimulation; all was performed in earnest. Several of them, as Theodorus and Symeon Stylites, when their mothers or sisters came to visit them, and earnestly begged admittance, would not be seen. When any of them quitted their retirement and returned to the world, they were considered as apostates, and men lost to goodness; but they might enter into the church.

At first they set at defiance all learning, as useless or pernicious, and imitated their father Antony, who was entirely illiterate. They spent their time working with their hands, and in silence, prayer, and contemplation: but afterwards, when they were formed into societies, they betook themselves to study.

They dwelt apart, each in his hole, so that most of them kept sad company; and by this moping and evermusing life they were prepared and qualified to dream dreams, and see visions, and to converse with angels and dæmons; and many miracles were said to be wrought by them, which found easy credit and reception in a credulous age.

The devils used often to appear to the monks in the figure of Æthiopian boys or men; and thence, probably, the painters learned to make the devil black.

Evagrius, an adorer of monkery, hath given us a strange account of the monks of Palæstine in the fifth century. Some, says he, shut up in monasteries, exercise all sorts of macerations; some dwell in little dens of the earth just big enough to hold them; others, of a more eminent degree, males and females, repair to desert places, wearing nothing except a small covering of their nakedness; and

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walking upon all four, eat grass and roots like the beasts, and if they see any passenger, they run away and hide themselves. Another sort of monks, more perfect than all the former, haunt the cities and the places of the greatest resort, pretending to be mad, and run into public houses, and eat and drink with any sort of people, and frequent the baths continually, and above all seek out the company of the women who go thither, and wash themselves along with them, &c. Balnea publica frequenter adeunt, et simul cum mulieribus diversantur et lavant. Adeo omni perturbatione animi superiores, ut naturæ ipsi vim inferant, et nec aspectu, nec tactu, nec amplexu ipso mulieris, ad ea quæ naturæ ipsorum propria sunt, inclinari queant. Sed cum viris quidem viri sunt, feminæ vero cum feminis. Non enim unius, sed utriusque simul sexus esse cupiunt.' i. 21. You may think perhaps that Evagrius intended to insult or ridicule them. 'Tis no such thing; he is very

serious.

Gregory Nazianzen, celebrating the absurd austerities and mortifications of the monks of Nazianzum, tells us that some of them, through an excess of zeal, killed themselves, to be released from the wicked world, p. 107.

Pachomius the monk earnestly exhorted his disciples to discover without delay their temptations to the wisest of their brethren, by whom they might be instructed how to get the victory over them, lest by concealing them too long, they should be carried to horrible extremities; for he assured them that many upon that account had flung themselves from the rocks, had cut open their bellies, and had killed themselves in various ways. Tillemont H. E. vii. 199. Nothing is more probable than that such a course of life should produce melancholy madness.

Some of the philosophers had exercised strange severities upon themselves and upon their disciples, from the days of Pythagoras down to the time of Lucian, who introduces the philosopher Nigrinus as condemning such practices, and observing that they had occasioned the death of several persons. Vol. i. p. 67. where Hemsterhusius says, Christiani ascetæ, postquam vestitum veterum philosophorum

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adsciverant, hæc quoque quæ Lucianus merito deridet, præpostera formandæ pietatis instrumenta non spreverunt ; quo de genere non pauca reperies in Vitis Patrum, et Cassiani Institutionibus. Multa notant, sed admodum perturbate.' Cresoll. Th. Rhet. v. 6, 7. Boilav. Hist. Flag. c. iv. p. 78.

They who had not the resolution to join themselves with these monks, yet admired what they would not imitate, and all the people magnified them.'

Monkery was pretty well established in the time of Constantine. It began in the Eastern countries, in Egypt, Palæstine, and Persia, before it was introduced into the Western parts of the Roman empire.

Palladius was a friend of Rufinus and of St. Chrysostom, a defender of Origen, a favourer of Pelagius, and an adversary of Saint Jerom. His history of the monks, and of their miracles, contains, like most other accounts of this kind, many extraordinary things. Amongst several instances of solid virtue and useful reflections, we find in it childish observations, examples which it would be dangerous to imitate, extravagant austerities, unreasonable actions, and injudicious enterprises.' Du Pin.

Palladius was a bishop, and had been a monk himself. He wrote the lives of the monks down to his own time, to A. D. 420. His book is called Historia Lausiaca,' à work, says Fabricius, quod nemo leget sine summa admiratione studii incredibilis quo viri illi et feminæ tam enixe conati sunt austeritate vitæ celebis et solitariæ, cultu durissimo, inedia ac jejuniis vix humanis, et abstinentia ab omnibus commodis vitæ, assequi sanctimoniam. Quan quam hanc in longe aliis rebus consistere, aliis peti alique, neque in solitudines esse relegandam, et cum conjugio et societate hominum neutiquam pugnare tum sacræ literæ tum ratio sana et sanctorum hominum non solitariorum conjugumque exempla, et monachorum atque eremitarum peccata testantur.' Bibl. Gr. ix. 5.

The Greek philosophers had a particular dress, and affected to appear rough, mean, and dirty, for which they were sometimes insulted in the streets by boys and by the populace; and the cynics, very prudently, were armed with a staff, to defend themselves from dogs and from the

rabble. The Christian monks imitated the old philosophers in their garb and appearance, and many of them seemed, in the opinion of those who loved them not, to have inherited the rags, the pride, and the contentious spirit of the former.

Some of them, out of mortification, would not catch or kill the vermin which devoured them; in which they far surpassed the Jews, who only spared them upon the sabbath day. Qui pediculum sabbato necat, tam reus est, quam qui camelum sabbato necaret:' says a rabbi.

Ammon, the father of the Ægyptian monks, in the days of his youth, being importuned by his relations to take a wife, married a young virgin, and on the wedding evening entertained her with a long harangue against the married state, and made her as fanatical as himself. The conclusion of which was, that they both eloped from their house, and fled to the desert, and there led a monastic life. Socrates, iv. 23.

We may compare this with the metamorphosis of Hippomenes and Atalanta, who on their wedding day were turned into lions:

modo levia fulvæ

Colla jubæ velant: digiti curvantur in ungues:
Ex humeris armi fiunt: in pectora totum
Pondus abit: summæ cauda verruntur arenæ.
Iram vultus habet; pro verbis murmura reddunt:
Pro thalamis celebrant silvas.'

Ovid. Met. x.

However, the monks, even in the earliest times, were not all of them such wonderful examples of mortification, as we learn from an unexceptionable witness, who was a fast friend and patron of monkery, from Athanasius. Writing to Dracontius, a monk, who had been chosen a bishop, and wanted much to decline the office, he says, When you are a bishop, you may fast and drink no wine: for we have known bishops who were fasters, and monks who were eaters; bishops who abstained from wine, and monks who drank it; bishops who wrought miracles, and monks who wrought none: many of the bishops have

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