ORIGIN OF MON ACHISM, 167 



thing earthly, purified from all remaining attachment 

 to the world, they hoped to foar into heaven, and lofe 

 themfelves in the fountain of being. Hence arofe in 

 iEgypt a two-fold piety and a two-fold virtue. A man 

 might be ordinarily pious and fublimely pious ; pious 

 as any one elfe might be, and pious as only the initiated 

 knew how to become. Ordinary chriflians laboured ; 

 the fublime chrirtian was funk in indolent repofe. A 

 fluggifh and gloomy myfticifm was accordingly the 

 natural offspring of all this fanatic ifm, of the gofpel 

 mifunderftood, and of the extravagancies of the new 

 platonic philofophy ; and then to this muft be added 

 the burning heats of the fun, in which men can con- 

 ceive no greater happinefs than coolnefs and repofe. 



Many of the afcetics heretofore dwelt in their houfes 

 and amongft mankind. But, lince they had learnt 

 from their airy maxims, to ftrike platonical fparks of 

 the deity out of themfelves, like fire out of a flint, to 

 break all their pallions like glafs, totally to efface all 

 impreffions of fenfe, to elevate the foul, proof againft 

 every trial, to its primitive fource, and to feek their 

 fovereign good in nothing but indolent repofe, they 

 abandoned the ties of fociety, and feparated from man- 

 kind. At the end of the fecond, and in the third 

 century, confequently in the times of the greateft pre* 

 valence of the new platonic philofophy, the afcetics 

 withdrew from the towns and cities into lolitary places, 

 and obtained the name of monks, that is, folitary 

 perfons. 



Some perfons indeed had lived in retirement before. But 

 numbers of them, merely in confequence of the segyp- 

 tjan, philofophy, which was inculcated on them by their 



H 4 tcac:,;.- 



