%g® PROGRESS OF MONACHISM. 



Others threw away their cloaths in pious difdain, and 

 feveral furious anachoretic faints of both fexes have 

 been admired for no other merit than that of reducing 

 themfelves to the uncultivated flate of nature. Some 

 of the anachoretes adopted a condition of life fo ex- 

 tremely rude and wretched, as nearly effaced all dif- 

 linclion between the rational being and the favage brute. 

 They took poffeffion of the dens of wild beafts, whom 

 they ftrove to refemble ; and there fretted, till fome 

 came and found them out, and brought them the ex- 

 pected tribute of admiration and reverence. 



Evagrius, in his eccleliaftical hiftory, tells us : that 

 fome anchorites in Paleftine dwelt in little holes in the 

 earth, that were not larger than themfelves ; that both 

 men and women betook themfelves to the moil barren 

 parts of the wildernefTes ; wore only fmall aprons ; went 

 on all fours ; fed upon grafs and roots like beafts ; and 

 fcampered to their holes as foon as they defcried a paf- 

 fenger. i 



Mefopotamia was the principal refidence of the gra- 

 zing anachoretes ; and this mode of life was in reality 

 more f eve re than it was even then commonly fuppofed. 

 Saint Ephrem relates, that in his time there were ana- 

 choretes of this clafs, who had refolution enough to go 

 and live in fandy waftes, where there was abfolutely 

 neither grafs nor water. After a feries of inexpreffible 

 fufTerings, thefe folitaries of the fublimeft order wanted 

 much to return to the habitations of men ; but now 

 they were deficient in the means. Panting with thirft, 

 and emaciated by hunger, they lay upon the ground, 

 and would have perifhed in the dreadful heats of the 

 fun, like many of their fellows, had not fome traveller 



taken 



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