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been regarded with affectionate reverence in the church. For there are, and ever have been, persons who, in their own particular case, have felt it right to remain single, and to deny themselves the endearments and consolations of the married state. This feeling of duty may be presented to the mind on very different grounds, and with different objects. But such persons, whether lay or clerical, have, at all times, been found in the church, and have been honoured and respected. Mr. Newman and his party, however, are not content with this sober and Christian view. According to their doctrine, there is something of impurity in the married state, and the state itself is something to be repented of. Virginity is a thing in itself meritorious, and a mode of expiating sin; and celibates, and monks, and nuns, with "calm faces, and sweet plaintive voices, and spare frames," are the only persons deserving to be called "Bible Christians;"* and, in fact,-as

*The term is so applied by Mr. Newman in his Sermons on Subjects of the Day-in the Sermon called, "The Apostolical Christian." The passage is as follows:

“Study what a Bible Christian is; be silent over it; pray for grace to comprehend it, to accept it. And next ask yourselves this question, and be honest in your answer. This model of a Christian, though not commanding your literal imitation, still is it not the very model which has been fulfilled in others in every age since the New Testament was written? You will ask me in whom? I am loth to say: I have reason to ask you to be honest and candid; for so it is, as if from consciousness of the fact, and dislike to have it urged upon us, we and our forefathers have been accustomed to scorn and ridicule these faithful obedient persons, and, in our Saviour's very words, to cast out their name as evil, for the VOL. I.

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we see in this passage,-Holy Virginity is represented as a state, which no one can fill, who is not naturally a person of such violent passions, as render the single life "an actual, protracted, life-long crucifixion." Such teaching is not merely erroneous, and heretical: it tends to drive men into the opposite extreme, and to bring sober, self-denying, and truly heavenly-minded piety into suspicion and contempt.

Son of Man's sake.' But, if the truth must be spoken, what are the humble monk, and the holy nun, and other regulars, as they are called, but Christians after the very pattern given us in Scripture? What have they done but this,-continue in the world the Christianity of the Bible? Did our Saviour come on earth suddenly, as He will one day visit, in whom would He see the features of the Christians He and His Apostles left behind them, but in them? Who but these give up home and friends, wealth and ease, good name and liberty of will, for the kingdom of heaven? Where shall we find the image of St. Paul, or St. Peter, or St. John, or of Mary the mother of Mark, or of Philip's daughters, but in those who, whether they remain in seclusion, or are sent over the earth, have calm faces, and sweet plaintive voices, and spare frames, and gentle manners, and hearts weaned from the world, and wills subdued; and for their meekness meet with insult, and for their purity with slander, and for their gravity with suspicion, and for their courage with cruelty; yet meet with Christ every where,Christ, their all-sufficient, everlasting portion, to make up to them, both here and hereafter, all they suffer, all they dare, for His Name's sake?"-pp. 328, 329.

CHAPTER XVI.

CELIBACY-ST. CUTHBERT AND ST. EBBA-ST. WILFRID.

THE justice of the observation with which the preceding chapter concluded-namely, that the fanatical language used by Mr. Newman and his party regarding celibacy and marriage, is likely to bring into contempt and suspicion a class of persons every way to be respected and loved,-must, I should suppose, be sufficiently obvious to every one who has thought attentively on the subject. On the other hand, when young people are set a talking about holy virginity, when they are taught to speak of "ardent longing" for it, "panting after" it, "pursuit of" it;-and further, to talk of the state of religious celibacy as "the sensible cuttings of the very cross," and "the preservation of holy Virginity" as like nothing less than "an actual, protracted, life-long crucifixion,"—it is impossible to avoid asking one's self, what sort of ideas of purity and chastity they are likely to acquire. But, in effect, what is to be thought of Mr. Newman's notion of sanctity?—that state, which we are told is a totally distinct and different sort of thing from the mediocrity to which the holiness of ordinary Christians aspires. A saint, according to Mr. Newman's teaching, is, plainly, a person of no ordinary degree of natural viciousness, and of unusual, and

almost preternatural violence of animal passions. His sanctity consists mainly, in the curious and farfetched ingenuity of the torments by which he contrives to keep himself within the bounds of decency. The story of St. Cuthbert and St. Ebba has already been alluded to. It is related in these words :

We are told that the whole kingdom regarded Ebba as a spiritual mother, and that the reputation of her sanctity was spread far and wide. And one fact is recorded which of itself speaks volumes. It is well known that St. Cuthbert carried the jealousy of intercourse with women, characteristic of all the saints, to a very extraordinary pitch. It appeared as though he could say with the patriarch Job, “I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid ?" [Just as if Job, who was a married man and had twenty children, meant by these words that he had taken a vow of celibacy!] And for many ages after females were not admitted into his sanctuary. Yet such was the reputation of St. Ebba's sanctity, and the spiritual wisdom of her discourse, that St. Bede informs us that when she sent messengers to the man of God, desiring him to come to her monastery, he went and stopped several days, in conversation with her, going out of the gates at nightfall and spending the hours of darkness in prayer, either up to his neck in the water, or in the chilly air.—St. Ebba, pp. 113, 114.

What an extraordinary idea of religious intercourse between two canonized saints-a bishop and an abbess! And what notions of sanctity Mr. Newman's party must entertain! Nor is this the only passage of this character. In the life of St. Wilfrid we are informed that—

He watched over his chastity as his main treasure, and

was by an unusual grace preserved from pollution; and to this end he chiefly mortified his thirst, and even in the heats of summer and during his long pedestrian visitations, he drank only a little phial of liquid daily. So through the day he kept down evil thoughts, and when night came on, to tame nature and to intimidate the dark angels, no matter how cold the winter, he washed his body all over with holy water, till this great austerity was forbidden him by Pope John. Thus, year after year, never desisting from his vigilance, did Wilfrid keep his virginity to the Lord. In vigil and in prayer, says Eddi the precentor, in reading and in fasting, who was ever like to him? Such was the private life of that busy bishop: so words sum up years, and cannot be realized unless they are dwelt upon, any more than that eternity by which they are repaid. pp. 64, 65.

Here, then, is a bishop going on visitation; and not only a bishop, but a saint; one whose virtues soar into the heights of heroicity-one who worked miracles when living, and whose relics wrought miracles after his death. And yet, during the progress of his episcopal visitations, this bishop and saint is obliged, in order to preserve his chastity and keep down evil thoughts, to punish himself by day with the tortures of thirst, and at night to wash his body all over with holy water, in order "to tame nature and intimidate the dark angels." If such be Mr. Newman's notions of the purity of saints, what must be his standard for ordinary Christians!

What follows in this story is rather an interruption to this part of my subject, but I may as well transcribe it here, since it will serve as an additional

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