stantine, the Ascetics fled from a profane and degenerate world, to perpetual solitude, or religious society. Like the first Christians of Jerusalem,[1] they resigned the use, or the property, of their temporal possessions; established regular communities of the same sex, and a similar disposition; and assumed the names of Hermits, Monks, and Anachorets, expressive of their lonely retreat in a natural or artificial desert. They soon acquired the respect of the world, which they despised; and the loudest applause was bestowed on this Divine Philosophy,[2] which surpassed, without the aid of science or reason, the laborious virtues of the Grecian schools. The monks might indeed contend with the Stoics in the contempt of fortune, of pain, and of death; the Pythagorean silence and submission were revived in their servile discipline; and they disdained, as firmly as the Cynics themselves, all the forms and decencies of civil society. But the votaries of this Divine Philosophy aspired to imitate a purer and more perfect model. They trod in the footsteps of the prophets, who had retired to the desert;[3] and they restored the devout and contemplative life, which had been instituted by the Essenians, in Palestine and Egypt. The philosophic eye of Pliny had surveyed with astonishment a solitary people, who dwelt among the palm-trees near the Dead Sea; who subsisted without money, who were propagated without women; and who derived from the disgust and repentance of mankind a perpetual supply of voluntary associates.[4]
- ↑ Cassian (Collat. xviii. 5 [Migne, vol. xlix. p. 1095]) claims this origin for the institution of the Cœnobites which gradually decayed till it was restored by Antony and his disciples.
- ↑ Ὠϕελιμώτατον γάρ τι χρη̂μα εἰς ἀνθρώπους έλθον̂σα Θεον̂ ἡ τοιαύτη ϕιλοσοϕία. These are the expressive words of Sozomen, who copiously and agreeably describes (l. i. c. 12, 13, 14) the origin and progress of this monkish philosophy (see Suicer. Thesaur. Eccles. tom. ii. p. 1441). Some modern writers, Lipsius (tom. iv. p. 448, Mlanuduct. ad Philosoph. Stoic, iii. 13) and la Mothe le Vayer (tom. ix. de la Vertu des Payens, p. 228-262), have compared the Carmelites to the Pythagoreans, and the Cynics to the Capucins.
- ↑ The Carmelites derive their pedigree, in regular succession, from the prophet Elijah (see the Theses of Beziers, A.D. 1682, in Bayle's Nouvelles de la Réublique des Lettres, Oeuvres, tom. i. p. 82, &c. and the prolix irony of the Ordres Monastiques, an anonymous work, tom. i. p. 1-433. Berlin, 1751). Rome and the inquisition of Spain silenced the profane criticism of the Jesuits of Flanders (Helyot, Hist. des Ordres Monastiques, tom. i. p. 282-300), and the statue of Elijah, the Carmelite, has been erected in the church of St. Peter (Voyages du P. Labat, tom. iii. p. 87).
- ↑ Plin. Hist. Natur. v. 15. Gens sola, et in toto orbe præter ceteras mira, sine ullâ feminâ, omni venere abdicatâ, sine pecuniâ, socia palmarum. Ita per seculorum millia (incredibile dictu) gens æterna est in quâ nemo nascitur. Tam fœcunda illis aliorum vitæ pœnitentia est. He places them just beyond the
