appearance of a scriptural foundation for the doctrine, either so carefully limit the advice they convey (for command there is none) to circumstances occurring, or arising out of the state and prospects of religion at the time they were delivered, or so strictly confine it to the individual conscience of the Christian, and so perfectly fence it off from all interference on the part of the church, that it seems incredible, that the error could have originated in them. One of these, is a place of great obscurity, and of very doubtful application; and even if we admit, that it applies to Christianity at all times (as the early fathers have interpreted it,) the precept it conveys only amounts to the general position, that the consciences of some individuals, among the disciples of Christ, may be persuaded, that they will better promote the progress of the Gospel if they remain single, than if they marry: the other2 is an uninspired opinion, given for the existing necessity; when the writer, St. Paul, was prescient, by the spirit of prophecy, of a persecution then imminent over the church he was addressing, and is therefore obviously incapable of any more general application. But when we find the same apostle declaring, with plenary inspiration, that "forbidding to marry is the doctrine of fiends," and that "marriage is honourable unto all," we can hesitate no longer. It is morally impossible that the notions upon this subject which so soon led to monachism, with all its follies and crimes, could have been even suggested by the New Tes

4

1 Matt. xix. 12. To understand the allusion fully, it should be borne in mind, that celibacy was accounted an absolute crime among the Jews: the doctrine, therefore, that a person abstaining from marriage could serve God acceptably at all, was probably new to many of our Lord's hearers. 21 Cor. vii.

31 Tim. iv. 1, 3.

4 Heb. xiii. 4.

tament, unless some powerful prepossession had biassed the interpretation.

But can it be shown that monastic notions existed in times antecedent to the first propagation of Christianity? We conceive that this question will be satisfactorily answered in the affirmative, by the canon of discipline prescribed to his followers by Pythagoras of Crotona in Grecian Italy, who flourished about five hundred years before the Christian era. He required of those who aspired to be his disciples, and their number was very great, a commencing-probation of five years' silence; during which, they listened daily to the maxims of wisdom which fell from the lips of the philosopher; but until that period had elapsed, they never beheld his person. The purport of these instructions was in unison with the policy of this concealment. While the one inspired them with a reverential awe of his presence, the other exhorted them to an entire submission of their wills to his, in all things.

They were for

His course of discipline was exceedingly severe. Animal food was altogether forbidden in the earlier stages of it, and even those roots and herbs that needed cooking: while of the allowed food, none were permitted to eat to satiety.-Water was their only beverage. Their dress was a perfectly clean white woollen garment. bidden to laugh or jest; to indulge in either joy or sorrow; anger also was to be entirely subdued. In a word, for every emotion of the mind, for every action of their lives, for every hour of the day, a strict rule was prescribed to them. As whole nations became his disciples, it was impossible for him to prohibit marriage; but he evidently greatly discouraged it. His immediate disciples had all things in common; and lived together in a spacious building which he erected near his own dwelling,

in order that he might there enforce the observance of his rule of discipline. All these privations he called upon them to submit to, that they might thereby be prepared to see the gods; a blessing only attainable by the possessor of a perfectly clean body, enveloped in a white garment. Pythagoras, we are informed, learnt these doctrines from certain Indian Gymnosophists or Brachmans, whom he met with at Babylon. I believe it would be impossible to name the individual, whose opinions exercised so powerful an influence over the religion and philosophy of Greece, as Pythagoras of Crotona. But his code of discipline embodies, not only the elements, but the very details of monasticism; which, in every form it assumes, is always based upon these two principles;-entire submission to the will of the superior, and the purification of the soul, by the mortification of the body.

Nor was it from the Pythagorean philosophy alone, that the early Christians derived those monastic notions, which they did not, could not, find in the Bible.

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The Jewish sect, called Essæi, or Essenes, were much spoken of about the time of our Saviour's birth. They are said by Josephus,5 and Philo, to have been then in number about four thousand and in the account of their customs given by these authors, we discover an astonishing agreement with the discipline of Pythagoras.. The probation of the novices was completed in three years; during this time they were, in the first place, inured to the most laborious and self-denying exercises; after one year, they were permitted to minister to the elder brethren at meals, and in the bath, but were not allowed even to enter the house where they resided, until the end of the third year. They were incessantly taught the necessity of entire

obedience to all their commands and wishes: and, though daily permitted to sit at their feet, and listen to their instructions, were never allowed to speak in their presence. The resemblance is preserved throughout the entire course of their discipline.-Simplicity and frugality in diet were among the fundamental maxims of both sects. It is not probable that the Essenes were allowed the use of any animal food whatever; they appear to have had a horror of taking animal life, like the Pythagoreans; and, like that sect, they also refused to offer bloody sacrifices, but sent meat-offerings to the temple at Jerusalem: for they never entered that, or any other city themselves, through fear of being polluted, by contact with the uninitiated. Their dress was a clean white garment; and cleanliness with them, as with the Pythagoreans, was a most important part of their religion they always bathed in pure spring-water before their devotions. Their ethical code was evidently founded upon the Mosaic records; they were taught the most exact performance of their word: and in every other particular, it as much excelled that of Pythagoras, as the morality of the Decalogue exceeds that of the Greek philosophy. But the same strict rules, both of living and thinking, were imposed in both disciplines; bearing, even in their details, a very extraordinary resemblance to each other: and in both, they produced precisely the same effect, in repressing and subduing the passions and emotions of the mind. The Essenes were remarkable for their sober and grave deportment, and for their unflinching firmness in enduring tortures. Still preserving the close resemblance which we are endeavouring to point out, they also enjoined, and very generally observed, celibacy, though some of them were allowed to marry. Their avowed purpose, in this course of discipline, was, by the mortification and maceration of

the body, to afford to the soul a greater facility in obeying the attraction upwards, by which it was always influenced. -They professed the utmost reverence for the law and institutions of Moses: but their ritual was by no means free from idolatrous practices. They addressed their prayers to the sun in the morning before he rose.

It

Now it is plainly impossible that all these coincidences should occur in two systems, both springing up about the same time, in regions so widely separated, unless their founders had originally drawn from the same source. must also be remembered, that the Essenes begin to be noticed in Jewish history almost immediately upon the return from the second captivity.—Is it not, then, highly probable, that it was at Babylon that the Jews, as well as Pythagoras, first learnt these very peculiar notions, and from the same instructors also, the Brachmans or Indian Gymnosophists?-If it be allowed me for a moment to pursue this digression, it was just about the period we are considering, that the followers of the extraordinary being Buddhu, the great reformer of the Hindu mythology, experienced a fierce persecution from the adherents of the ancient religion, which terminated in their expulsion from peninsular India. The votaries of Buddhu fled eastward and northward, planting, in some of the Hindu-Chinese nations, their religion unimpaired; in others, engrafting their strange notions of contemplative Theism upon the prevalent idolatries. That they also fled westward, there can, I think, be little doubt: we recognise them in the Brachmani of whom frequent mention is made, both in the later philosophical, and the ecclesiastical, writings;—the name of Buddhu himself is also known to these authors; he is mentioned by Clement of Alexandria as the head of one sect of the Indian Gymnosophists: a circumstance in itself