ciple, which they supposed to be matter; and they taught that all those souls who purpose to return to God after death must abstain from wine, flesh, and wedlock, and from all that tends to sensual gratification. Both Pythagoras and Empedokles prohibited the eating of animal food, from the supposition that there is a kovova between gods, animals, and men, The rule of entire abstinence from flesh, though generally insisted upon, was not of universal obligation among the ancient monks. The Carthusians are not allowed to eat flesh, even in the most dangerous sickness. They fast eight months in the year, and in Lent, Advent, and all Fridays, reject all white meats, as eggs, milk, butter, and cheese. On Sundays and holidays they eat together in a common refectory, but on other days they dine alone in their cells, their food being carried to them by a lay brother, who puts it into each cell at a little window, without speaking a word. They are not permitted to eat in any other place but the convent, nor to drink anything but water. According to the rule of Benedict, the monks were allowed as their daily portion (Reg. 33, 40) twelve, or eighteen, ounces of bread, a hemina of wine, and two dishes of vegetables. The flesh of quadrupeds was strictly prohibited, except to the feeble and the sick. When the Lombards, in 580, destroyed the abbey in which Benedict had resided on Mount Cassino, the abbot escaped to Rome, taking with him the weight of the bread and the measure of the wine which were the daily allowance of each monk. No monk is allowed to eat out of the monastery, unless he is at such a distance that he cannot return the same day. The Cistertians never eat flesh except in times of dangerous sickness; unless upon extraordinary occasions, they abstain also from eggs, butter, milk, and cheese, but they can make use of these articles of diet when they have been given in alms. From the Septuagesima until Easter flesh is banished even from the infirmaries. They all take their food together in the refectory. "In preieres and penaunces Putten hem manye, Al for the love of oure Lord Lyveden ful streyte, In hope to have after Hevene rich blisse; As ancres and heremites That holden hem in hire selles, And coveiten noght in contree To carien aboute, For no likerous liflode Hire likame to plese."-Piers Ploughman, v. 49. We have seen that the use of wine was not universally forbidden; but by the early canons the ascetics were prohibited from entering a public house. In the Anglo-Saxon church the priest was enjoined "to keep aloof from all parties assembled for the purpose of singing and carousing, and above all to preserve himself from drunkenness, the besetting sin of his countrymen." By the council of Cloveshoe, all inhabitants of monasteries are forbidden to drink to excess themselves, or to encourage such excess in others; they are to exclude from their entertainment coarse unseemly amusements, and never to allow their cells to become the resort of gleemen, harpers, and buffoons. Yet Alcuin accuses them of being addicted to "secret junketings, and furtive compotations." * In 1521, in the abbey of Whalley, containing about twenty monks, there was expended for red wine, the sum of £33 15s. 8d.; and for white or sweet wine, £9, which at the rate at which wine was then sold would give about eight pipes per annum. The monks of Sallay brewed annually 255 quarters of malted oats and 104 of barley, and as the whole establishment consisted of about seventy persons, each individual would consume about 300 gallons annually; but a large allowance must be made for hospitality. Many of the earlier ascetics took only one meal daily, which was generally after sunset; some fasted three or four days without any nourishment whatever; and even when partaking of food they lived only on wild herbs and roots, or on pulse steeped in cold water, and never touched anything that had passed the fire. The water that they drank was sometimes kept until it was offensive. From the time of his conversion, Pachomius never ate a full meal. Paul, the Thebaean, had half a loaf brought him every day, by a raven, except upon one occasion when he was visited by Anthony, and the provident bird brought a whole one. According to Athanasius, the food of Anthony was bread and salt, and his drink water; whilst feeding upon this diet, he neither became fatter nor thinner; and his meals were taken in private, as he was ashamed that he was obliged to eat. An account of the daily food of Hilarion has been preserved. From his twenty-first to his twenty-seventh year, he ate at first lentiles in half-a-pint of cold water, and afterwards * Lingard's Anglo-Saxon Church. + Whitaker's History of Whalley. Whitaker's History of the Deanery of Craven. bread, salt, and water; from his twenty-seventh to his thirtieth year, wild herbs and undressed roots; from his thirty-first to his thirty-fifth year, six ounces of barley bread and parboiled cabbage without oil. But finding that he was becoming near-sighted, and his skin scurfy he added a little oil. From sixty-four till eighty he abstained altogether from bread, and substituted five ounces of a compound of flour and chopped cabbage.* Palladius contented himself with four or five ounces of bread daily, and one small vessel of oil in a year. Simeon Stylites took only one meal in the week, which was on the Sabbath. In Lent, he fasted so long that I must give the account in the words of my authority, lest I be accused of exaggeration. "At the foot of Mount Thelanissa," says Alban Butler, "he came to the resolution of passing the whole forty days of Lent in total abstinence, after the example of Christ, without either eating or drinking. Bassus, a holy priest, and abbot of 200 monks, who was his director, and to whom he had communicated his design, had left with him ten loaves and water, that he might eat if he found it necessary. At the expiration of the forty days he came to visit him, and found the loaves and water untouched, but Simeon stretched out on the ground, almost without any signs of life. Taking a sponge, he moistened his lips with water, then gave him the blessed eucharist. Simeon, having recovered a little, rose up, and chewed and swallowed by degrees a few lettuce leaves and other herbs. This was his method of keeping Lent during the remainder of his life." Catherine, of Sienna, accustomed herself to so rigorous an abstinence, that the eucharist was nearly the whole nourishment she took; and once she fasted, with the exception of what she took in the cucharist, from Ash Wednesday to Ascension Day. The food that Basil took was so small in quantity, that he appeared to live without it, and to have put on beforehand the life angelic. Paul, of Mount Latrus, for some weeks had no other subsistence than green acorns, which caused him at first to vomit, even to blood. A countryman sometimes brought him a little coarse food, but he principally lived upon what grew wild upon the mountain. When he wanted water, a constant spring was produced near his dwelling. In the midst of these privations, the ascetics preserved their equanimity, even upon the most trying occasions. Once, when Ephraim, of Edessa, had fasted several days, the brother who was bringing him a mess of pottage made * Encyclopa dia Metropolitana, art. Hermit; Hospinianus, De Monachis. with a few herbs, let the pot fall, and broke it. The saint seeing him in confusion, said cheerfully, "As our supper will not come to us, let us go to it; then sitting down he picked up his meal from the ground. When Arsenius, who had been a courtier, presented himself for admission before the monks of Scete, he was allowed to stand whilst the monks took their repast, and no notice was taken of him; but John the Dwarf, took a piece of bread and threw it down on the ground before him, upon which Arsenius fell down, and in that posture cheerfully ate the bread. Germanus began every meal by putting a few ashes in his mouth, and the bread he ate was from barley he had himself threshed and ground. Francis generally put ashes or water upon what he ate, even when it was only a little coarse bread.* Piers Ploughman says, v. 4086: "Ac ancres and heremites That eten noght but at nones, Myn almesse shul thei have, That han cloistres and chirches." These legends are many of them incredible, and nearly all of them absurd. The only meats from which the Christian is to abstain are those offered to idols, and blood, and things strangled. -Acts xv. 29. We may eat "whatsoever is sold in the shambles ;" and it is regarded by St. Paul as the sign of "a departing from the faith," a giving heed to "seducing spirits and doctrines of devils," when men command us "to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth for every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving."-1 Tim. iv. 3. The law of the Lord inculcates the relinquishment of certain kinds of food for an especial reason, and men make the law universal; they forget the reason, and make a merit of the act. The word of God enjoins temperance, and man demands total abstinence. These are perversions that may in some instances produce a temporary good, but they are in danger of inflicting a permanent evil upon the church by setting another law above the revealed will of God, or by carrying out one branch of that will to an undue extent, putting a part in place of the whole, and thus infringing God's prerogative as * Alban Butler, passim: Professor Emerson, Andover, in the Bibliotheca Sacra. the supreme legislator. The religion of Christ is one of cheerfulness and holy joy; the primitive believers "did eat their meat with gladness of heart;" and though there is a good moral in the words of Herbert, we must not allow the principle to rob us of our privilege "to rejoice evermore : "Take thy meat; think it dust: then eat a bit, And say with all, Earth to earth I commit." X. SLEEP. Whilst yet in innocence, Adam slept; and calm indeed must have been the midnight hour of Paradise. The repose of all animate creation would be profound; the beast as still in its slumber as the herbage upon which it reclined, or the flower that grew in beauty by the side of its lair. But the ancient ascetics regarded sleep as a part of animality they were to throw off to as great an extent as possible. With some it would be difficult to accomplish this design, as those persons who have few cares to perplex their minds are possessed of powers of sleep to which we whose lot has been cast in this restless generation must ever be utter strangers. The better informed among them would perhaps sometimes remember that Adam was neither deprived of wedlock, nor food, nor speech, nor sleep; and as they in their solitude were debarred from the former of these privileges, they would be tempted the more to indulge in the fourth, and to say to themselves, "a little more sleep and a little more slumber," when the rule of their order or their personal vow would call upon them with its stern voice to arouse themselves and pray; yet it is a hard task to resist sleep in some frames of the body, and the morning twilight would often see them nodding their heads like the bulrush when bowed down by the wind, at a time when they ought to have been erect as the trunk of the tree, blasted by the lightning and now decayed, into which they had crept at sunset. In eastern climes the nights are so beautiful, and the bare ground so comfortable a place of rest, that in the Indian systems of asceticism we meet with little account of the modes of penance that are connected with sleep. It is an ordinance of the Dina Chariyawa that the novice is to arise before daylight. There are sixty hours |