may trust a monk for being, ever in his place-for the Church against the world.-Ibid. p. 39.

Yet, somehow or other,—if church history be not wholly fabulous,―monks have not been thought quite to come up to this standard of unearthliness in all times and places. Yes; but "true monks."-Very well. But, unhappily, there have been such long and desperate quarrels and malignant hatreds between monks, and orders of monks, that, without a very uncatholic exercise of private judgment,-it has not been at all times easy to determine, while they were biting and devouring one another, which were the "true monks" and which the false.

CHAPTER IV.

LIVES OF THE ENGLISH SAINTS: HOLY VIRGINITY.

It will not be surprising (even if one had not seen what Mr. Newman has published elsewhere) that works in which one finds such praises of monasticism, should be equally vehement in their praise of celibacy. On this subject, indeed, these volumes contain such specimens of extravagance and of false and erroneous teaching, that I scarcely know how to treat the subject as it deserves. And it is to be hoped, that few of my readers will require more than to have the passages referred to fairly put before them.

Holy virginity is no less a portion of Christianity than holy penitence, and the denial of the virtue of the one most certainly impairs the full belief in the other, For the communion of saints and the forgiveness of sins lie close together in the creed.-St. Gilbert, p. 49.

The logic is certainly worthy of the cause. But

we must not interrupt the author.

Nor is holy virginity the creation of an age of romance; Gilbert, when he built the cloister at Sempringham, thought but little, as we shall soon see, of picturesque processions and flowing robes of white; he only thought of the blessed Virgin, and of St. John, and of the whiterobed choir in heaven, who have followed the Virgin Lamb, wherever he hath gone. Still less did he think about the usefulness of what he was doing; as well might he have thought about the uses of chastity, for virginity is only

chastity carried to

supernatural degree.

They who

deny the merit of virginity leave out a portion of Christian morals.-Ibid. pp. 49, 50.

The merit of virginity a portion of Christian morals! And yet, on the very next page the author tells us "the Bible says nothing about monks and nuns." But the Bible will go but a short way to the development of what are now called "Christian morals."

Again:

Happiest of all is she who is marked out for ever from the world, whose slightest action assumes the character of adoration, because she is bound by a vow to her heavenly spouse, as an earthly bride is bound by the nuptial vow to her earthly lord.—Ibid. p. 51.

In like manner, towards the end of the volume,—

In proportion as they realize the incarnation of the Lord, they will love more and more to contemplate the saints, and especially St. Mary, for a reverence for her is inseparable from that right faith in the humanity of the Son of God, which we must all believe and confess. They will learn that the high honour in which the church has ever held holy virginity is a necessary portion of Christian doctrine, and not a rhapsody peculiar to any age.—pp. 132, 133.

There is no mistaking the Romanism of these passages. But is there any truth in these views? Are they not undoubtedly false and unscriptural? Is it not clearly the revealed will of God-that men should marry and bring up children in his holy fear? -and is it not equally certain that the unmarried state has no perfection or pre-eminence in itself?

Under particular and temporary circumstances of the church,―as, for instance, during a season of persecution,-it may be expedient that Christian men and women should keep themselves free and disengaged: but to speak of virginity as in itself more excellent,—as if there was any dishonour or impurity in the married state,-is plainly contrary to the word of God. And indeed,-to say what it is painful even to think, these extravagant praises of virginity are not merely false and unscriptural, they are anything but symptomatic of the purity of those who deal in them. Pure minds are as little likely to be occupied with thinking of their purity, as lowly minds of their humility. What precautions and vigilance a man may feel bound to use, who is suffering the temptations incident to a mind which had been suffered to become habituated to impure thoughts and passions, is not here the question. But the notion these writers have of saints seems to be this: that saints (and be it observed they speak in the same extraordinary manner of females as of men) are persons whose dispositions would force them to run into the very grossest excesses and extremities of vice if they did not keep themselves under continual check, by means of self-invented tortures, penances, and restraints. The author of the life of St. Ebba, in this series, tells us that "St. Cuthbert carried the jealousy of women, characteristic of all the saints, to a very extraordi

nary pitch," so that, whenever he visited her monastery, to hold spiritual conversation with St. Ebba, he used to go out of the gates at nightfall, and spend the hours of darkness in prayer, "either up to his neck in the water, or in the chilly air." (p. 114.) Persons who invent such tales, and those who retail them, do, most undoubtedly, cast very grave and just suspicions on the purity of their own minds. And young persons who talk and think much in this way, are in extreme danger of falling into sinful habits. As to the volumes before us, the authors have, in their fanatical panegyrics of virginity, made use of language downright profane: and they have likewise spoken of marriage in a tone too nearly approaching the sentiments of some of the vilest of the ancient heretics.