152 THLED ri:RIOD A.D. 311-590.
and tlic ascetic system was completed in India long before tin introduction of Christianity, even if we should trace this back to St. Bartholomew and St. Thomas.
The Hellenic heathenism was less serious and contemplative, indeed, than the Oriental ; yet the Pythagoreans were a kind of monastic society, and the Platonic view of matter and of body not only lies at the bottom of the Gnostic and Manichgean asceticism, but had much to do also with the ethics of Origen and the Alexandrian school.
Judaism, apart from the ancient Nazarites,' had its Essenes in Palestine " and its Therapeutse in Egypt ; ' though these betray the intrusion of foreign elements into the Mosaic religion, and so find no mention in the 'New Testament.
Lastly, Mohammedanism, though m mere imitation of Christian and pagan examples, has, as is well known, its dervises and its cloisters,"
Now were these earlier phenomena the source, or only analogies, of the Christian monasticism ? That a multitude of foreign usages and rites made their way into the church in the age of Constantine, is undeniable. Hence many have held, that monasticism also came from heathenism, and was an apostasy from apostolic Christianity, which Paul had ])lainly foretold in the Pastoral Epistles.^ But such a view can hardly bo
Lamaists iu Thibet borrowed tlieir religious forms and ceremonies in part from the Nestorian missionaries. But this view is a mere hypothesis, and is rendered improbable by the fact, that Buddhism in Cochin China, Toncpiin, and Japan, where no Nestorian missionaries ever were, shows the same striking resemblance to Romanism as the Laraaism of Thibet, Tartary, and North China. Respecting the singular tradition of Prester John, or the Christian priest-king in Eastern Asia, which arose about the eleventh century, and respecting the Nestorian missions, sec Ritter, 1. c.
' Comp. Num. vi. 1-21.
' Comp. the remarkable description of these Jewish monks by the elder Pliny, Hint. Natur. v. 1.5 : "Gens sola, et in toto orbe pncter cKteros mira, sine ulla fomina, omni veuere abdicata, sine pecunia, socia palmaruni. Ita per scculorum niillia (incredibilc dictu) gens ajterna est in qua nemo nascitur. Tarn fa^cunda illis alioruna Titas pcnitentia est."
' Euscsbius, 11. E. ii. 17, erroneou.sly takes them for Christians.
* IT. Ruffner, 1. c. vol. i. ch. ii.-ix., gives an extended dcsciiption of those cxtr* Christian forms of monasticism, and derive? the Christian from them, especially fron the Buddhist
• So even Calvin, w^o, in his commentary on 1 Tim. iv. 3, refers Paul's propher ^
§ 28. ORIGIN OF CHRISTIAiSr MONASTICISM. 15S
reconciled with the great j)lace of tliis phenomenon in history, and would, furthermore, involve the entire ancient church, wilh its greatest and best representatives both oast and Avest, its Athanasius, its Chrjsostom, its Jerome, its Augustine, in the predicted apostasy from the faith. And no one will now hold, tliat these men, wlio all admired and commended the monastic life, were antichristian errorists, and that the few and almost exclusively negative opponents of that asceticism, as Jovinian, Helvidius, and Yigilantius, were the sole representatives of pure Chistianity in the JSTicene and next following age.
In this whole matter we must carefnlly distingnish two forms of asceticism, antagonistic and irreconcilable in spirit and principle, tliough similar in form : the Gnostic dualistic, and the Catholic. The former of these did certainly come from heathenism ; but the latter sprang independently from the Christian spirit of self-denial and longing for moral perfection, and, in spite of all its excrescences, has fulfilled an important mission in the history of the church.
The pagan monachism, the pseudo- Jewish, the heretical Christian, above all the Gnostic and ManichjEan, is based on an irreconcilable metaphysical dualism between mii:d and matter ; the Catholic Christian monachism arises from the moral conflict between the spirit and the flesh. Tlie former is prompted throughout by spiritual pride and selfishness ; the latter, by humility and love to God and man. The false asceticism aims at annihilation of the body and pantheistic absorption of the human being in the divine ; the Christian strives after the glorification of tlie body and personal fellowshi]) with
of the ascetic apostasy primarily to the Encratites, Gnostics, Montanists, and Manichteans, but extends it also to the Papists, " quando coelibatum ct ciborum abstinentiam severius urgent quam ullura Dei praDceptum." So, recently, Riiffner, and especially Is. Taylor, who, in his "Ancient Christianity," vol. i. p. 299 sqq., has a special chapter on The Predicted Ascetic Apostasy. The best modern interpreters, however, are agreed, that the apostle has the heretical Gnostic dualistic asceticism in his eye, which forbade marriage and certain meats as intrinsically impure ; whereas the Roman and Greek churches make marriage a sacrament, only subordinate it to celibacy, and limit the prohibition of it to priests and monks. The application of 1 Tim. iv. 1-3 to the Catholic church is, therefore, admissible at most only in a partial and indirect way.