public person who has freely become responsible for other men's salvation; and especially if he can believe that the Vindictive Powers whom he is holding at bay with a strong arm, are watching for the fall of so notable a champion, and would rush upon the spoil were he

to faint!

And besides; it is only by heading-up the merit of penance to such a height as that there shall always be a large amount in store, that the public martyr can feel to be himself quite secure against the demands of justice.-May not a man who is every day expiating the sins of others, assume it as certain that his own are discharged?-Thus the warfare against ghostly exactors is carried on upon advanced ground; and the knight-spiritual has a space in the rear to which, if pressed, he may retreat.' pp. 105-108.

6

6

6

In this delineation of the characteristic features of the ascetic fanaticism, there is, perhaps, more of biographical fidelity than of strictly philosophical analysis. We are not made distinctly to perceive, how it is that the ascetic enthusiasm passes into the more virulent stage of fanaticism. The errors and abuses of monkery', the Author remarks in his former volume, sprang, 'by imperceptible augmentations, from sentiments perfectly natural to the sincere and devout Christian in times of perse'cution, disorder, and general corruption of morals.' The application of this remark must be extended to the monastic fanaticism; and a true analysis, therefore, would resolve it, in part, into the same elements. The enthusiasm of self-infliction is the misdirected principle of self-denial, the counterfeit of true mortification of spirit. The fanaticism of self-infliction would seem to be the same principle rendered virulent by external calamity, natural moroseness, or a dark and ferocious theology. But it is scarcely possible to bring under one general description all the specific manifestations of individual character. should have been better satisfied, if the Author had not generalised his observations so much, but illustrated his conclusions by the specific cases with which the ample stores of his reading would have furnished him. It would have been useful, too, we think, to shew the connexion between fanatical sentiments of the description under consideration, and the theological errors to which they were allied. The notion of vicarious and supererogatory merit could not have obtained currency till the true doctrine of the Atonement and of Justification by faith had become lost; and the ascetic life could not have been had recourse to as the only means of practising virtue and overcoming the world, had not the true doctrine of Divine Influence become obscured, and the Christian faith been thus deprived of its sustaining principle. It is not to be wondered at, if those who thought to resist temptation, and to attain perfection, in their own strength, were foiled and baffled, and, being irritated by defeat, took refuge

We

in the spurious sanctity of monkery, and solaced their pride by a species of self-revenge.

The most interesting portion of this section of the work, is that which is occupied with the character of Basil, the primate of Cappadocia, in whose writings the monastic system assumes the most seductive and romantic form.

His descriptions of his own seclusion among the mountains of Pontus, and of the pleasures of abstracted meditation and holy exercise, can hardly be read without kindling an enthusiasm of the same order. In his ascetic rules, too, there is very much of admirable and elevated sentiment, and of scriptural discretion; as well as a thorough orthodoxy. More easy is it to yield the heart and judgment to the persuasive influence of the writer, than to stand aloof, and call in question his principles.

Nor perhaps, apart from the aid of that comment which the after history of the Church has made upon those principles, would it have been easy to demonstrate their pernicious tendency: and yet, there is little or nothing among the enormities of the ascetic life which might not be justified on the grounds assumed by Basil:-as for example, That the domestic constitution of man is abstractedly imperfect, and irreconcileable with high attainments in piety :-That Religion—or at least that the only admirable order of religion, consists, not in the worthy and fruitful exercise of virtuous principles amid the occasions and trials of common life, but in cutting off all opportunities of exercise, and in retreating from every trial of constancy:-That, in a word, piety is a something which in every sense is foreign to the present state, and can flourish only in proportion as its laws and constitutions are contemned and discarded.

This

The first practical measure necessary for giving effect to maxims such as these, was of course that of breaking up the conjugal economy, and of gathering men and women (destined by God for each other as sharers in the joys of life, and helpers in its labours and sorrows) into horrid fraternities and comfortless sisterhoods of virginity. violence once done to nature, and then every lesser enormity was only a proper consequence and a consistent part of the monstrous invention. All fanaticism, all cruelties, all impurities were in embryo within this egg. Strange does it seem-or strange to us of this age; that the authors and promoters of the unnatural usage, while reading the evangelic records, did not see that the virtue of our Lord and of his Apostles, if we are not to think it quite inferior to that of which the monks made their boast, was altogether unlike it, and must have been founded on different maxims. Of our Lord it is said, that he was continually accompanied in his journeys by women who “ministered unto him." But the doctors of monkery assure us, that the society of woman is altogether pernicious, and wholly incompatible with advancement in the Christian life;—yes, that the mere touch of a female hand is mortal to sanctity! The sanctity of the monk then, and the purity of the Son of God, had not, it is manifest, any kindred elements. Of the Apostles and first disciples it is said, that they consorted together" with the women ;" and throughout the history of the

Acts, nothing appears to have attached to the manners of Christians that was at variance with the genuine simplicity and innocence which is the characteristic of a virtuous intercourse of the sexes. The "angelic life," described and lauded by every Father, from Tertullian, to the Abbot of Clairvaux, is not any where to be traced in the authentic story of the first and purest years of the Christian Institution. Why was not a fact so conspicuous perceived by Chrysostom, by Gregory, by Basil? Alas! such is the original limitation, or such the superinduced infatuation of the human mind, that, when once it takes a wrong path, not the most eminent powers of reason, nor the most extensive accomplishments avail to give it a suspicion of its error!' pp. 125 –130.

‹ In its rancorous stage, the fanaticism of austerity is not to be looked for in a writer so great and good as the Bishop of Cæsarea. For instances of this we must turn to some of his contemporaries of less note; and to those who afterwards followed in the same track. Nevertheless, the germs of malignant religionism (such as in a preceding section we have briefly stated them to be) are not wanting even in Basil. It is evident, for example, that the very serious impressions he entertained of the Divine Justice, and its bearing upon man, were not balanced, as in the minds of the apostles, by a clear and auspicious understanding of the great article of justification by faith :-his faith therefore was comfortless, severe, and dim. Again, the scriptural belief of the agency and malice of infernal spirits, had become, in that age, and hefore it, so turgid and extravagant that it filled a far larger space on the circle of vision than properly belongs to it. In truth, among the monks, the subject of infernal seduction quite occupied the mind, to the exclusion almost of happier objects of meditation. The devil, whatever may be the title of the piece, is the real hero of the drama of monastic piety :—that piety, therefore, has all the proper characters of superstition. pp. 131, 132.

We must hasten on to the Author's description of the more virulent species of fanaticism, which looks abroad for its vic'tims.' The fanaticism of austerity is the proper parent of the fanaticism of cruelty.

‹ Often, indeed, has the one generated the other in the same bosom ; or, if the history of the Church is looked to, it will be seen, that, within the circuit of a century or more, those outrages upon human nature which had been going on in the cells of the monastery, and those preposterous sentiments which the ascetic life enkindled, reached their proper consummation when the friar and the inquisitor took in hand to rid the Church of her enemies.'

The connexion between the infliction and the endurance of torments, has been a very frequent one;- frequent enough', it is remarked, 'to bring under just reprobation every specious 'form of asceticism.' One of the earliest and most zealous advocates of the practice of burning heretics was the Abbot Theophanes, who had himself suffered extreme severities under the

Iconoclast, Leo V., and was a constant sufferer from the stone ! A happy religion can alone produce benevolence.

The elementary principle of the odium theologicum is thus described.

The offence given to self-love, and the wound inflicted upon pride, by resistance in matters of opinion, is deep in proportion, not simply to the importance of the question debated, but to its obscurity also; for in this case a secret dread of being at length overthrown and humbled, adds asperity to arrogance. It is obvious then, that no subject can equal religion in furnishing occasion to these keen resentments. The vastness and unlimited range of the matters it is concerned with-the infinite importance of its capital truths, and the readiness with which the weight of what is substantial may be made over to what is not so -even to the most trivial of its adjuncts, fit it well to impart the utmost vehemence to whatever feelings attend the contests of mind with mind. All this hardly needs to be affirmed; nor can we wonder to see the bitterness of ordinary strife assuming, when religion is the subject of controversy, a solemn virulence, such as makes secular contentions seem vapid and trivial. Common hatred now rises to an immortal abhorrence; wrath swells to execration, and every ill wish breaks out in anathemas.

6

That feelings so strong should vent themselves in vindictive acts, when opportunity serves, is only natural; and we might, without advancing further, account in this manner solely for the cruelties in which religious discords have so often terminated. But there seems to be something yet deeper in the tendency to employ torments and death as means of persuasion. It should be expected that a course of action so preposterous as that of destroying men in professed love to their souls, will be found to take its rise from a sheer absurdity: such, for example, as that of putting an antagonist into the position with which we associate the idea of atrocious crimes, in order to confirm ourselves in the belief that he is indeed an atrocious criminal. This, we grant, is reasoning in a circle ; but it is a logic not strange to the human mind.

6

:

Religious rancour once generated, whether in the manner we have described, or in some other which we have failed to penetrate, gets aggravation from incidental causes, some of which demand to be mentioned. Such as arise from specific opinions we shall presently have occasion to speak of. To look then to external causes, one of the most ordinary and obvious is, the mixed feeling of jealousy and interested pride that floats about the purlieus of every despotism, and especially of every religious despotism. It is trite to say that cruelty is produced or exasperated by the consciousness of impotence; and as the foundations of spiritual tyranny are less ostensible, and more precarious than those of secular government, its alarms will be more vivid, its jealousies more envenomed, and its modes of procedure more rigorous and intemperate. The natural temper of men being supposed the same, it can hardly happen otherwise than that the rod or staff of ghostly supremacy should be a more terrible engine than the sceptre and the sword of temporal power. Must we not admit too, and may

we not admit without offence, that, if once he gives way to the taste for cruelty, the man of the cowl and cloister will prove himself a more inexorable and a more ingenious tormentor, than the man of the field and cuirass?' pp. 145–150.

At this last page, we are startled at meeting with an expression which we cannot suppose intended to convey the sentiment apparently intimated, but we are at a loss for an explanation. Who shall imagine,' says the Author, the happy fruits of the same institution,' (the sacerdotal order,) when it shall come to 'take effect upon the social system with the unembarrassed power ' of its proper motives ? ' The New Testament affords no countenance to this dangerous misapplication of Levitical analogies to the Christian ministry. Every true Christian is a priest. The notion of a sacerdotal order is the parent error of the worst abominations of the Romish Church. Of course the Author is fully aware of this fact; for he afterwards remarks, that a peculiar species of ferocity, like to nothing else in the circle of human sentiments, a rancour from which has been discharged all that 'is vigorous and generous in manly resentments, and all that is relenting in those of woman, although some few single ex' amples of it had before been shewn to the world in the course ' of twenty centuries,—had never attached to a body, as its cha'racteristic, until the sacerdotal institution, under the fostering 'care of the Romish Church, reached its maturity.' The Author's graphic delineation of the Papacy—it is indeed an historical painting-has all the power of genius and the fidelity of truth. We are in no small danger, at the present moment, of being seduced into a forgetfulness or disbelief of the true character of the Romish corruption. The decent and respectable aspect which Romanism assumes in England, together with the claims of the oppressed Papists in Ireland to our deep sympathy, where the wrongs of a nation give energy to the persecuted misbelief, have, it is to be feared, contributed to blind our countrymen to both the enormities and the dangers inseparable from the Papal system. But the Romanist, the Author remarks, can have no more right to boast of the purity of the Catholic clergy of England, or to appeal to the manners of English priests, as a fair specimen of the sacerdotal body, than modern deists have to ' take a parallel advantage of the mild temper and irreproachable 'character of some who now reject Christianity. To judge equitably of Deism, we must look at it where it has received no cor'rective influence from Christianity; and Popery must be judged on the same principle.' But, when referred to distant times or foreign countries for an exemplification of the true character of Popery, most persons are apt to shift the culpability from the system itself to the state of society which it had produced, or the national character it had contributed to form, and to conclude, most

6

VOL. XIII.-N.S.

D