I (56 ORIGIN OP MONACHISM. 



teachers, the enlighteners and improvers of their times,, 

 became nothing better than ufelefs philofophical monks. 



All thefe gloomy and idle fanatics, without ex- 

 ception, taught that man was only happy by afcending 

 to God ; and to this fupreme felicity, to this reunion 

 with the deity, he could never attain, till all the bands 

 were loofed that attached the foul to matter. They 

 maintained, that the tranquil lover of wifdpm, whq 

 fought after it in ftlence, needed neither permanent, 

 health nor athletic ftrength, for being partaker of the 

 foverejgn felicity ; fpr that this could no otherwife be 

 attained than by gradually ftifling the paffions, and by 

 neither craving nor fearing, neither fprrowing nor re- 

 joicing at any thing that is not in our power to obtain 

 or to avoid. The notions entertained by the new pla- 

 tonics of the perfection of human nature, were there*- 

 fore altogether furprifing, lince they prized the virtues, 

 not according to the relations of purpofed advantages, 

 which are founded on certain aptitudes and actions, 

 but according to the degree of dirlance tp which they 

 carried us from matter, and brought us nearer to thq 

 deity. 



Such idle conceits and fantaftical follies as thefq ? .. 

 were now fo much interwoven with the chrifhian reli- 

 gion in /Egypt, that it was disfigured tq that degree 

 $s not to be known. Philosophizing chriftians whq 

 pretended to lead a life of extraordinary fanclity on the. 

 fublime principles of the new platonic fyftem, made it 

 $11 their fhidy to detach their foul from tl;e. fetters of 

 the l?ody, by contemplation, abitinence, folitude, and 

 bodily torments, that even in this life they might unite; 

 |}iemfelves nearer with God. Removed above^every 



thing 

 1 



