submit to its regulations. This was also a rule in the feudal law, "Desit esse miles seculi, qui factus est miles Christi; nec beneficium pertinet ad eum, qui non debet gerere officium."* A monk was, therefore, accounted civiliter mortuus; and when he entered into religion, might, like other dying men, make his testament, and nominate his executors; or if he made none, the ordinary might grant administration to his next kin, as if he were actually dead intestate. And such executors and administrators had the same power, and might bring the same actions for debts due to the religious, and were liable to the same actions for those due from him, as if he were naturally deceased. Nay, so far has this principle been carried, that, when one was bound in a bond to an Abbot and his successors, and afterwards nominated his executors, and professed himself a monk of the same abbey, and, in process of time, was himself made Abbot thereof, the law gave him, in the capacity of Abbot, an action of debt against bis own executors, to recover the money due.‡

We are not, for all this, to treat slightly, much less contemptuously, the early monastic institutions. There are two observations, evidently to

* Blackstone. + Littleton.

be

Coke on Littleton.

be made on them. First, concerning the severity of ecclesiastical penance. This, as I have said before, cannot be deduced from Scripture; and therefore, however extravagant, or however absurd; however opposite to the attributes of a commiserating God, or the feelings of a fallible man, it may be thought; Christ and his Apostles cannot be answerable for it. The other, is that pious liberality, derived from the new commandment of " loving one another," which has been perhaps the peculiar and distinguishing characteristic of Christians, as opposed to every other denomination of men. In the times of the Apostles, and in the first ages of the church, it shewed itself in voluntary contributions for the relief of the poor and the persecuted, the infirm and the unfortunate. As soon as the church was permitted to have permanent possessions in land, and acquired the protection of the civil power, it exerted itself in the erection of hospitals of every kind; institutions of charity and humanity, which were forgotten in the laws of Solon and Lycurgus, and for a single example of which you will, I believe, in vain explore the boasted annals of Pagan Rome.*

* Bishop Watson.

It

It has been, notwithstanding, a prevalent, for it has been an easy, and convenient species of wit, to pour general and undistinguishing censure on the monks; and to suppose their foundations to have been the retreats of vice, and of illiterate indolence, at every period of time. But the fact is, that even in England, about the period of the Norman conquest, monasteries were the only seminaries of learning we had. The most eminent scholars which this island produced, both in philosophy and humanity, then, and even afterwards, for centuries, were educated in our religious houses.* And was not the case the same upon the continent?

Recollect, also, how much the destruction of the monasteries in England injured agriculture. Our history proves, that one-third, at least, of England was cleared, and brought into cultivation, by the monks, particularly by that most respectable order of them, the Benedictines. The same was also the case in France. The waste and barren soils, that were abandoned to them as of little or no value to the public, they thus brought into luxuriant production. The swampy lands they drained; the over-grown woody ones they cleared away. In short, let le

*Monast. Ang.

vity

vity say what it will, these venerable men were not generally consecrated to God, that they might fatten upon idleness. They, on the contrary, built, planted, and cultivated the soil, to the eventual benefit of the community; at the same time, no doubt, to the immediate comfort of themselves, their fraternities, and the indigent and wretched.

It would not be conformable to good sense, nevertheless, to say, that monastic institutions should at all times have existence, as being at all times equally beneficial. I have long been decidedly of a different opinion;* and my former judgment becomes daily strengthened by experience. Yet, for a moment, (and candour demands the example) turn your eyes upon Russia. Would it not be injurious, would it not be even madness, to suppress religious houses in that country; in a country of such prodigious extent, and at present of such little civilization? Who but monks, who in fact possess the greatest portion of the science of the clergy, can be supposed capable of the task of instructing the Russian peasantry? Moreover, as I have said above, where there are little more than waste grounds, religious foundations have ever been found advantageous

Philosophical Rhapsodies.

to

to agriculture: where intellectual ignorance prevails, they have never failed to disseminate knowledge and letters; and where war, and other such exterminating occupations, form the national character, they have always been found successful expounders of the mercies of religion.

In the instances of the more compact governments of Europe, it may, however, I will confess, be beneficial, once for all, to pay the tribute of gratitude for benefits received. Society may at length demand the apparently ungrateful sacrifice of all no longer useful, however venerable piles. The scaffolding is always, we know, removed, and the builders paid off, when the mansion is completely finished. But why wantonly degrade, where we should rather confer present comforts and honour, and even, if possible, posthumous reputation? It is not the purest example on record which men follow, when they make the depraved and insatiably wicked Henry VIII. of England their model. But you will tell me, it is not rendering religion unpopular, to oblige her ministers to activity; contemptible, to compel them to purity; or unamiable, to divest them of invidious splendour. I grant it. And I will further acquiesce in the principle, that independent and wealthy clerical corporations

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