228 UNIVERSAL ERUDITION? 



gious orders may be reduced to five claffc% 

 monks, canons, knights, mendicants, and regu- 

 lar clerks. Many of the fathers of the church 

 regard Sr. John the Baptiit as the founder of a 

 monallic life, and St Jerom calls him, on that 

 account, monacborum prineeps. But nothing is 

 more ridiculous than fuch an opinion. What 

 refemblance is there between St. John and a 

 monk ? Could St. John ever think of prohibit- 

 ing that which God and religion, pofitive and 

 natural, permit , that is, the allowing of church- 

 men to marry, and- provide inhabitants for the 

 world, and fubjefts for the ftate ? Be this how- 

 ever as it may, we find in the hiftory of the 

 church (efpecially in thofe that are wrote by ca- 

 tholic authors) a feries of all the religious or- 

 ders that have been founded in Chriftianity dur- 

 ing the eighteen centuries that it has fubfifted, 

 with the regulations that each of thele orders 

 have adopted and followed. Father Helyot, a 

 penitent of the third order of St. Francis, has 

 iormed a hiftory of the monadic, religious and 

 military orders, and of all the focieties of each 

 fex : and there is, at the beginning of his firft 

 volume, a catalogue of fuch books as treat of 

 thefe orders. 



XVII. (to.) fie Series of the principal Authors- 

 cf Sacred Hiftory. At the head of this laft divi- 

 fion are naturally placed, 



i . The facred authors of the New Teftament. 

 Our Saviour has left us no part of his 



divine 



