i899 J. BELLOWS — MONASTIC ORDERS 41 



"Another abuse needing eorrection is the religious 

 " orders, because they have so deteriorated that they are 

 " a serious scandal to the laity, and do the greatest harm 

 " by their example." * * «= " We are of opinion that 

 " they should all be abolished " — etc. 



If it was the opinion of the cardinals of the Roman 

 Church that the monasteries did " the greatest harm by 

 their example," and that " they should all be abolished," 

 then it is evident that all the endeavours, to set up a 

 standard of purity higher than that of the family circle, 

 had failed utterly. More than a thousand years of evolu- 

 tion in one experiment after another, had ended in this 

 verdict of the very guardians of the institution, that it 

 had so " deteriorated " that the only thing to be done with 

 it was to " abolish " it. 



This has nothing to do with Henry VIII. or his mis- 

 deeds. If he had never been born it would evidentlv have 

 been the duty of the English parliament to abolish the 

 monasteries, if they were in the condition which the Pope 

 and his counsellors seriously averred they were in, all 

 over Europe. There were no fewer than thirty heads of 

 monasteries in the House of Lords that passed the Act of 

 Dissolution, and when the Commissioners' Report of the 

 abuses in the various houses was read, Lingard states that 

 not one of these 28 Abbots and 2 Priors opened his lips 

 in refutation of it. Yet even if the charges made had 

 been untrue, it was not much like Englishmen to sit still 

 under them, no matter what the risk of speaking might 

 be. There was great indignation against the betrayal of 

 the trust of which the bulk of the monks had been 

 guilty ;=^ but amidst all the indignation there was an 



* What the condition of the English monks was, twenty years before the Cardinals' 

 Report here mentioned, may be seen from a letter by Thomas More in reply to one of 

 their number who had expressed a fear that he would be corrupted by the "new learning " 

 of his friend Erasmus. It was written in 1519: He, certainly, is above suspicion of bias 

 against monachism : yet this is what he says : 



