the supernatural, in which fanaticism, fatuity, and imposture strangely blend together; but we must not think that either Rome's priesthood or Rome's monastic orders are quite as imbecile and antiquated, and out of the living world, as these narratives would indicate. Rome has got other occupation for them besides these readings, more in accordance with the real world, and more favourable to the increase of her power, and the spread of her influence.

THE ASCETIC AND MONASTIC LIFE.

169

CHAPTER X.

THE ASCETIC AND MONASTIC LIFE.

Pope Gregory on ascetic merits.—Expression of them in prayers.—The fast of Lent. Other fasts. -Church doctrine of fasting,-Fasting, when natural.-Use in the Jewish Church.-The Nazarite.-Difference between John and Christ.Meaning. The apostolic practice.-Absence of apostolic precepts.-Meaning. -Divine wisdom of New Testament silence.-Contrast with Mahometanism and Romanism.-Ignorance of effects of climate and occupation.-Fasting and feasting.-Fasting and idleness.-Apostolic prediction of the rise of ascetism.—Show of wisdom and boldness.-Social dangers of ascetism.-Few traces of Monasticism in Scripture.-Its spirit contrasted with the apostolic.-Causes of the passion for a monastic life.-Evils to the Roman Empire.-Services in the middle ages. -Proposal of Protestant retreats.-No principle of union.-No doctrinal root in Protestantism.-The devotional in Monasticism.-Its stunted development of the Christian man.-Mariolatry one of its reactions.

POPE Gregory the Great is cited in the Breviary as saying:"When it is said, bring forth fruits worthy of penitence, every man's conscience will tell him that he acquires the

gain of good works by his penitence, by so much as he inflicts suffering on himself for his sins." (4th Sunday Adv. Brev.)

Thus the favourite pope of the Breviary teaches very plainly the doctrine, that the more miserable we make ourselves in this world, the more sure we are of forgiveness in the next. This doctrine receives ample illustration in the legends of the Breviary, and the prayers of the Missal abound in expressions of confidence in the atoning merits of self-inflicted sufferings:

"O God, who givest the rewards of their merits to the just, and forgiveness to sinners through their fasting, have mercy on thy suppliants, that the con

fession of our guilt may prevail to obtain the pardon of our faults, through our Lord." (4th S. Quadrag. 4th Feria.)

1 The word ascetic comes from the Greek, asznos, exercises, because prescribed as a course of exercise for the attainment of perfection. Monastic from μόνος, alone. The monks were at first hermits or solitaries. The passion for solitude soon spent itself when they were really left alone; the hermits then clustered together, first in one valley or hill-side, then under one roof, then at one table and under one rule and discipline, when they were called Cenobites, from their life in common.

"O Lord, we beseech thee, that our fasts may be accepted, and by expiating our sins make us worthy of thy grace,

and conduct us to eternal remedies. Through our Lord." (Week of Pass. Sunday, 3d Feria.) 1

1

These claims to merit, on the ground of ascetical exercises, are quite as plain as those of the pharisee in our Lord's parable. The greater, of course, the number and duration of these exercises, the more complete their efficacy, and the less need of any other atonement. Such prayers in the Missal always end, it is true, with the name of our Saviour, yet who can doubt of the practical result of such practices, and such church teachings! What man systematically engaged in inflicting or devising selftortures, can resist the conclusion that " grace is no longer grace,” and that salvation is a debt due to him by Heaven for self-sufferings endured under church regulation!

"Behold my humiliation and my labours, and forgive all my sins." (2d Sunday Quadrag. Missal.)

That is, the self-humiliations and self-inflictions of the season of Lent, whether fasts, self-scourgings, wearing of haircloths, walking barefoot, going on bare knees, &c.

"We beseech thee, O Lord, graciously to infuse thy grace into our hearts, that, bridling our sins by voluntary chastisements, we may rather macerate

our flesh in the present time, than be cut off by eternal punishment. Through our Lord." (Passion Week, 6th Feria.)

Thus teaching that these present sufferings of the flesh avail to the removal of eternal punishments.

The feast of Lent was one of the earliest, as it is one of the longest, of all the periods of church fasting. The pretence is the imitation of our Saviour's fast in the wilderness. But it were as reasonable to imitate our Lord's crucifixion, and quite as practicable. The Breviary records instances of this forty-days fast almost perfect, except the moistening of the lips with water towards the close. But the observance of this fast in any degree is meritorious, and although few attain to perfection, yet these few are held up as objects of admiration, and their merit therein

1 This prayer is omitted in the English translation of the Missal by Hussenbeth, published by Dolman, Another is substituted not in the Latin Missal.

2 The crucifixion of Christ has been imitated literally; certain nuns in Paris last century exhibited themselves upon a cross.-See Edgar's Variations of Popery. An archbishop of Dublin, of the name of Lawrence, carried this kind of imitation of Christ so far, that he would not eat any bread that was not mixed with ashes, quoting the text, Ps. cii. 9, "For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping."

forms part of the merits of the saints laid up for those that reach not the same heights of rigorous observance. Besides this annual feast, those that would be "perfect" fast on Wednesdays, because our Lord was betrayed on that day, and on Fridays, because he was crucified, thus equalling the twice a week of the ancient pharisee. Fasting is an essential part of that repentance which Rome calls penance, and of which it has made a church sacrament. Other churches make fasting the exception, but Rome makes it the rule of those that would be perfect, and, instead of leaving it to individual discretion, puts all under church direction and prescription.1

Ascetism, in one form or other, is the teaching of Rome in her prayers, her creed, and her legends. Ascetism, in some of its many forms, revives in Rome with every revival of religious earnestness, because both in doctrine and practice, an unchangeable part of her church system. The Irish are told in the Breviary that their patron, St Patrick, recited his Psalter daily "immersed in cold water to the chin," that others wore hair shirts, girdles of iron, and the more perfect added sharp prongs to their girdles; lying on the bare ground is a common achievement, and flagellations, self-inflicted or by brethren on each other, is the practice in the city of Rome to this day.

1 In all ritualistic churches, fasting is a part of their religious system, which revives with the revival of religious earnestness. Calmet, the author of the Dictionary of the Bible, a Roman ecclesiastic, writing between 1672 and 1757, a period of great religious apathy in all churches, exclaims, "One cannot be sufficiently astonished at the extreme remissness which is become general among Christians in respect to fasting, particularly in the Latin Church, and in the West." Art. Fasting, Dict. Had he lived in the present day, he would not have made the same complaint. The revival of the High Church party in England has shown the same tendency to return to ascetic exercises.

Jerome, as cited in the Breviary, says, "Fasting is not virtue perfected, but the foundation of the other virtues." He had forgotten Peter's foundation and exhortation thereon, "add to your faith," (2 Peter i. 5); and Paul's saying, "other foundation can no man lay," and his warning against building a house of stubble on that noble foundation, (1 Cor. iii. 11, 12).

2 See Facts from Rome, by Mr Thomson of Banchory, who heard, if he did not see, the flagellations in a darkened church. Of the manner in which penances were lightened to the rich and powerful, Sharon Turner gives an amusing illustration in his History of the Anglo-Saxons: "If a penance was imposed for seven years, he might take to his aid twelve men and fast three days on bread, green herbs, and water. He might then get seven times one hundren and twenty men, whomsoever he could, who should fast three days, and thus make up as many days of penance as there are days in seven years. Thus the penance of a chief for seven years, might be got through in a week." (History of the Anglo-Saxons, vol. iii. p. 84.)

What countenance does Scripture give to ascetic practices? Let us take fasting, the chief of these exercises. Under the influence of any strong passion, but especially under deep sorrow, the cravings of hunger are suspended, and to fast is natural and spontaneous. "My heart is smitten and withered like grass, so that I forget to eat my bread," was said prophetically of our Lord, as the "man of sorrows." In the brief notices of the religious observances of the patriarchs we have no record of their fasting, but we find it the accompaniment of all the penitential acts of religion among the worthies of the Jewish Church. Their fasts were not only fasting from grief, but to grief, to "afflict the soul," to bring the body into harmony with it, and to give depth and intensity to its spiritual exercises. At the preaching of the prophet Jonas, the Ninevites, a Gentile nation, join fasting with their repentance. David "chastened his soul with fasting." Daniel, "the man greatly beloved," sought the Lord not only with prayer and supplications, but with fasting." Anna, the prophetess, looking "for redemption in Jerusalem, served God with fastings and prayers night and day." Notwithstanding the frequency of the practice of fasting amongst the Jews, we can only find in the Old Testament one instituted fast. "On the tenth day of the seventh month ye shall afflict your souls," in preparation for the great day of atonement.2 The order of the Nazarites is a nearer approach to modern ascetism. This order was sometimes for life, as in Samson and the Baptist, and sometimes for a limited time, as the apostle Paul's vow at Cenchrea. Abstinence from wine and strong drink was one of the vows of the Nazarite. Several of the Old Testament prophets seem to have belonged to it. Elijah and Elisha are described as self-mortified men; yet their austerities are never dwelt upon or extolled, like those of the Breviary, as in any way matters of admiration and imitation. At the close of the history of the Jewish Church, John the Baptist appears after the manner of the old prophets, the preacher of repentance, and the practiser of austerities; and so much does fasting appear to have been, in popular estimation, a badge of the pro

1 Jonah iii. 5; Ps. lxix. 10; Daniel ix. 3; Luke ii. 37. The Ninevites made even their cattle to fast; and in Joel ii. 16, the children at the breast fasted.

2 Lev. xxiii. 27, 29. Fasting is not named; but we infer its use from the expression "afflict," and the Jewish practice.