either ambition, or avarice, or gluttony. They did not live in stately
abbeys, nor ride on mules with gilded bridles, nor entertain people of
rank and fashion, nor hunt heretics with fire and sword, nor dictate to
princes in affairs of state, nor fill the world with spies, nor extort
from wives the secrets of their husbands, nor peddle indulgences for
sin, nor undermine morality by a specious casuistry, nor incite to
massacres, insurrections, and wars. This complicated system of
despotism, this Protean diversified institution of beggars and
tyrants, this strange contradiction of glory in debasement and
debasement in glory (type of the greatness and littleness of man),
was not then matured, but was resplendent with virtues which extort
esteem,--chastity, poverty, and obedience, devotion to the miserable, a
lofty faith which spurned the finite, an unbounded charity amid the
wreck of the dissolving world. As I have before said, it was a protest
which perhaps the age demanded. The vow of poverty was a rebuke to that
venal and grasping spirit which made riches the end of life; the vow of
chastity was the resolution to escape that degrading sensuality which
was one of the greatest evils of the times; and the vow of obedience was
the recognition of authority amid the disintegrations of society. The
monks would show that a cell could be the blessed retreat of learning
and philosophy, and that even in a desert the soul could rise triumphant
above the privations of the body, to the contemplation of immortal
interests.

For this exalted life, as it seemed to the saints of the fourth
century,--seclusion from a wicked world, leisure for study and repose,
and a state favorable to Christian perfection,--both Paula and Jerome
panted: he, that he might be more free to translate the Scriptures and
write his commentaries, and to commune with God; she, to minister to his
wants, stimulate his labors, enjoy the beatific visions, and set a proud