§ 177. THE WOEKS OF JEROME. 985
highest consideration among the Semi-Pelagians do\vn to Erasmus.'
He is equally unsatisfactory as a moralist and practical divine. He had no connected system of moral doctrine, and did not penetrate to tlie basis and kernel of the Christian life but moved in the outer circle of asceticism and casuistry. Following the spirit of his time, he found the essence of religion in monastic flight from the world and contempt of the natural ordinances of God, especially of marriage ; and, completely reversing sound principles, he advocated even ascetic filth as an external mark of inward purity. ' Of maiTiage he had a very low conception, regarding it merely as a necessary evil for the increase of virgins. From the expression of Paul in 1 Cor. vii. 1 : "It is good not to touch a woman," he draws the utterly unwarranted inference : " It is therefore bad to touch one ; for the only opposite of good is bad ; " and he interprets the woe of the Lord upon those that are with child and those that give suck (Matt. xxiv. 19), as a condenmation of pregnancy in general, and of the crying of Ifttle children,
' Hence it is not accidental, that several writings of Pelagius, liis Commentary on the Epistles of Paul (with some emendations), his Epistola ad Demetriadcm de virginitate, his Libellus fidei addressed to pope Innocent, and the Epistola ad Celantiam matronam de ratioue pie vivendi (which was probably likewise written by him), found their way, by an irony of history, into the writings of Jerome, on a seeming resemblance in spirit and aim.
■■' " Difficile inter epulas servatur pudicitia. Nitens cutis sordidum ostendit animum." So he wrote to two ladies, a mother and her daughter in Gaul, Ep. IIV, c. 6 (torn. i. 786). St. Anthony, the patriarch of monks, and other saints of the desert were of the same opinion, who washed themselves but seldom and combed their hair but once in a year, on holy Easter (when they ought to have been eminently holy, that is, according to their notions, eminently slovenly). What a contrast this to our modern principle that cleanliness is next to godliness ! We must, however, judge this catholic ascetic cynicism from the stand-point of antiquity. Even Socratks, starting from the principle that freedom from need was divine, despised undergarments and shoes, and contented himself with a miserable cloak. Yet he did not neglect cleanliness altogether, and censured his disciple Antisthenes, who ostentatiously wore a dirty and torn cloak, by reminding him : " Friend, vanity peepa out from the holes of thy cloak." Man is by nature lazy and dirty. Industry and cleanliness are the fruit of discipline and civilization. In this respect Europe is in advance of Asia, the Teutonic races in advance of the Latin. The Italians call th« English and Americans, soap-wasters. The use of soap and of the razor is a test of modem civilization.
986 TUIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
and (tf all the trouble and fruit of the married life. The dis agreeable fact of the marriage of Peter he endeavors to weaken by the groundless assumption that the apostle forsook his wif« when he forsook his net, and, besides, that " he must have washed away the stain of his married life by the blood of \m martyrdom." '
In a letter, otherwise very beautiful and rich, to the young Xepotian,'* he gives this advice : " Let your lodgings be rarely or never visited by women. You must either ignore alike, or love alike, all the daughters and vii'gins of Christ. Nay, dwell not under the same roof with them, nor trust their former chastity ; you cannot be holier than David, nor wiser than Solomon. Never forget that a woman drove the inhabitants of Paradise out of their possession. In sickness any brother, or your sister, or your mother, can minister to you In the lack of such relatives, the cliurch herself maintains many aged women, whom you can at the same time remunerate for their nursing with welcome alms. I know some who are well in the body indeed, but sick in mind. It is a dangerous service in any case, that is done to you by one whose face yon often see. If in your official duty as a clergyman you nmst visit a widow or a maiden, never enter her house alone. Take with you only those whose company does you no shame; only some reader, or acolyth, or psalm-singer, whose ornament consists not in clothes, but in good morals, who does not crimp his hair witli crisping pins, but shows chastity in his whole bearing. But privately or without witnesses, never put yourself in the presence of a woman."
Such exhortations, however, were quite in the spirit of that age, and were in part founded in Jerome's own bitter experience in his youth, and in the thoroughly corrupt condition of social life in the sinking empire of Kome.
While advocating these ascetic extravagancies Jerome doe? uot neglect to chastise the clergy and the monks for their faults
' Compare the work Against Joviniaii, 1. i. c. 7, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 26, 33, etc. and several of his ascetic letters. Some of hi.s utterances oa the state of matrimonj gave offence even to his monastic friends.
* Ep. 52 (i. 251 sqq.) de vita clericorum et mouachoruiu, c. 5.