CHAPTER XVIII.

MONASTIC LIFE.

THE eremitical life lays claim to great antiquity, and its followers were looked upon always as the most sainted sons of religion. St. Chrysostom tells us that the first institutor of monachism was Samuel, in the Old Testament; and St. Jerome, in his epistle to Rusticus, says, "The chief inventors and improvers of monachism were the sons of the prophets, in the Old Testament, who built huts near the river Jordan, and, quitting throngs and cities, lived upon barley cakes and wild herbs." And the same St. Jerome (a favourite Father with Presbyterians) writes, in his epistle to Paulinus, "We have the Apostles, Antony, Hilarion, and Macarius, for chiefs of our institute." Elijah and Elisha are also claimed as princes of the monastical life. So are the sons of Rechab, the Essenes, &c. And the MS. in the Cotton Library thus continues: "Having seen how it was represented under the Fathers of the Old Testament, it remains that we show how it was continued under those of the New. John the Baptist, who was between both the Testaments, flying* to the desert in his tender

* Yet we have no evidence of this.

years, was the first institutor of monastical life under the New Testament. Nay, Christ himself was, properly, the institutor, when he ordered his disciples to sell all, to leave all things, and to follow him; and after his Ascension the faithful sold all they had, laid the price at the feet of the Apostles, and lived in common, under their care and direction, possessing nothing they could call their own.

"After the martyrdom of the Apostles, many, falling off from their primitive fervour, began to seek the things of this world, and to possess them as their own, not in common, as before; but very many holy Fathers retaining that Apostolical fervour, and inspired by the Holy Ghost, continued to live under the direction of one in community, adding many sublimer things to what had been practised under the Apostles."

Eusebius, in the second book of his Church History, tells us how, by the example of St. Mark and the influence of his vast number of converts in Egypt, the holy monastical institute spread over all the world. Much more on this matter may be seen in Cassian, Sozomen, St. Jerome and Epiphanius.

"The most renowned among these ancient monks," continues the MS., "were Antony, Hilarion, the two Macarii, Pachomius, Aurelius, John the Father of 3,000 monks, Serapion the Father of 10,000, Dioscorus the Father of 100, Julian the Father of 10,000, Amos of 3,000, Theonas of 3,000, Paul of 500, Basil, Fructuosus, Ferreolus, Egyptius, Isidore, Aurelian, John Cassian, Jerome, and many more holy Fathers. At length succeeded St. Benedict, a strenuous hearer and fulfiller

of the Evangelical precept, who shined out like a bright heavenly star; and he, about the year of our Lord 516, was a resolute champion in Christ's warfare, in a monastery on Mount Cassino, and writ a commendable rule, approved of by the universal Church, as Pope Innocent II. testifies." Previous to this date, at least nine eminent monks had written monastical rules.

Gregory of Nazianzen writes thus of the excessive austerity of the monks of Pontus :-" Some torment themselves with chains of iron; others, shut up like wild beasts, in streight houses, see no man: they fast and keep silence twenty whole days. O CHRIST," he adds, "be favourable to those souls, who I confess are pious, but not discreet enough."

In England the original and advancement of Christianity and Monachism was nearly cotemporary. Some of the Druids, who were priests of that pagan religion, became monks; and their former life, in its severity of discipline, inclined them to the monastic form of Christianity.

The monks of Glastonbury have endeavoured to maintain the credit of a report, that in the year 31 after the Passion of our Lord, twelve of St. Philip the Apostle's disciples (chief of whom was Joseph of Arimathea *) came into this country and preached the Christian faith to Arviragus, who refused to embrace it, and yet granted them this place, with twelve hides of land where they made walls of wattles, and erected the first Church in this kingdom. These twelve, and their successors, continuing long the same number,

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and leading an eremitical life, converted a great multitude of pagans to the faith of Christ.

This report, however, is shown by Ussher in his Latin work, and Stillingfleet, in his English work on the British Churches, to have been first produced in the Norman times, during the eleventh century, and was therefore unknown to the Saxon kings who had previously favoured the rising of this foundation. But though Joseph of Arimathea was never at Glastonbury, it may be allowed that an ancient British Church was there, as described by Sir Henry Spelman: and the antiquary Leland, with others, conjecture that some eremitical person named Joseph, with his companions, not only resided, but was interred there, and this circumstance led on to the story of the actual settlement and interment there of Joseph of Arimathea.

This Church, we are told, was the sacred repository of the ashes of a multitude of saints, insomuch that no corner of it or of the churchyard is destitute of the same. In so great reverence was it held, that people would not so much as spit in the churchyard; and even from foreign countries the earth of this churchyard was sent for, to bury with the greatest persons. Here, as within the walls of Iona, should Johnson have trod.

The evidence in favour of St. Paul having preached the Gospel in Britain is very strong indeed, if not quite irrefragable: especially when we consider that both classical and ecclesiastical writers agree that Britain

See "The Church of England, apostolical in its Origin," &c. By Rev. Thomas P. Pantin, M.A. Wertheim & Co. 1849.

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was spoken of as "the utmost bounds of the west." Be this as it may concerning St. Paul, it seems to be satisfactorily proved that the Church of England can trace, through its various gradations of the Tudor, Plantagenet, Norman, Anglo-Saxon, and British times, its origin upwards to the Apostolic age.

The building of Churches, the gifts of tithes by means of which we have now the Gospel without money and without price in the Church of England, the founding of monasteries, became in due time mighty examples of deep piety. "Certainly," says a writer, "the fasts of these days were frequent, the prayers earnest, and the alms remarkable."

At first these institutions were full of use to mankind and without abuse. The style of living was poor and plain, while the labours were arduous. The rules said to have been prescribed to his monks, or canons, by St. Augustine, are all of a simple, self-denying character.* But we read, that these canons afterwards growing wealthy, entirely fell off from their strict discipline, indulging themselves in worldly pomps and excess, which produced another sort of those who were called Canons Regulars, the others being called Secular, that is, Irregular, this making them decline so as to be almost lost but they were again revived in the year of our Lord 1380.

Of the monks of Lanthony Abbey, we are informed, many lands were offered them, most of which they refused, choosing rather to live poor, than be involved in worldly solicitude: for the king and queen (Henry See Dugdale, vol. ii. p. 126. Also for sequent.