Page images
PDF
EPUB

achieves an enterprise at once difficult and glori ous. The holy Jerome checked the progress of many disorderly passions which he found rising in his breast; but the passion of Love resisted all his opposition, and followed him, with increasing fury, even into the frightful cavern to which he retired to implore, in humble prayer and solitary abstraction, the mercies of his God. The soli tude, however remote, to which the demon of sensuality is admitted, is soon crowded with legions of tormenting fiends. John, the anchorite of the deserts of Thebais, wisely addresses his soli. tary brethren," If there be any among you who, in his pride, conceives that he has entirely renounced the devil and all his works, he should learn that it is not sufficient to have done this merely by his lips, by having resigned his worldly dignities, and by dividing his possessions among the poor; for, unless he has also abandoned his sensual appetites, his salvation cannot be secure. It is only by purifying our bosoms from the pernicious influence of this master passion, that we can ever hope to counteract the machinations of Satan, and to guard our hearts from his dangerous practices. Sin always introduces itself under the guidance of some guilty passion; some fond desire; some pleasing inclination, which we wil lingly indulge, and by that means suffer the ene my of peace to establish his unruly dominion in our souls. Then tranquillity and real happiness quit their abode in our hearts, and all is uproar and anarchy within. This must be the fate of all who permit an evil spirit to set itself on the throne of their hearts, and to scatter around the poisonous seeds of wild desire and vicious inclinations." But Love once indulged in bright and rapturous fancies, fills the mind with such high and transporting ideas of supreme bliss, that the powers of reason are seldom, if ever, capable of making head against its fascinations. The her.

mit and the monk, who, from the nature of their situations, cannot taste its real charms, ought, if it were for that reason alone, to stifle at their birth the earliest emotions of this inspiring passion; for the indulgence of it must prove fatal to the vir tue, and of course destructive to the peace of every recluse. The impossibility that such characters can listen with any propriety to the dictates of this delightful passion, shews in the strongest manner the impolicy and absurdity of those insti tutions, on the members of which celibacy is enjoined. The happiness of every individual, as well as the civil and religious interests of society, are best promoted by inducing the endearments of sense to improve the sympathies, tenderness, and affections of the human heart. But these blessings are denied to the solitary fanatic, who is condemned to endure the suppression of his pas sions, and prevented from indulging, without endangering his principles, both the desires of sense, and the dreams of fancy. He cannot form that delightful union of the sexes, where sentiments of admiration are increased by prospects of personal advantage; where private enjoyment arises from a sense of mutual merit; and the warmest beams of love are tempered by the refreshing gales of friendship. The grosser parts of this innate and glowing passion can alone occupy his fancy; and the sentiments it instils, instead of refining his desires, and ameliorating his affections, tend, through the operation of his foul and corrupted imagination, to render his appetites still more depraved. He is as ignorant of its benefits, as he is of its chaste and dignified pleasures; and totally unacquainted with its fine sensibilities, and varied emotions, his bosom burns with the most violent rage: his mind wallows in images of sensuality; and his temper frets itself, by unjustly accusing the tempter as the author of his misery. If the luxu rious cogitations of such a character were dissi

pated by the pleasures and pursuits of busy life; if the violence of his passions were checked by laborious exercises; and if habits of rational study enabled him to vary the uniformity of retirement, and to substitute the excursions of mental curiosity, and moral reflections, instead of that perpetual recurrence of animal desire by which he is infected, the danger we have described would certainly be reduced; but without such aids, his self-denials, his penitence, his prayers, and all the austere discipline of tife monkish and ascetic school will be ineffectual. Celibacy, indeed, instead of assisting, as their disciples mistakingly conceive, to clear the soul from its earthly impurities, and to raise it to divine brightness and sublimity, drags it down to the basest appetites and lowest desires. But matrimony, or that suitable and appropriate union of the sexes which prevails under different circumstances, according to the manner and custom of different societies, leads, when properly formed, to the highest goal of human bliss.

Hail! wedded Love, mysterious law, true source
Of human offspring, sole propriety

In Paradise of all things common else:
By thee adult'rous lust was driven from men
Among the bestial herds to range; by thee
Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure,
Relations dear, and all the charities

Of Father, Son, and Brother, first were known.
Far be it that I should write thee Sin, or blame,
Or think thee unbefitting holiest place,
Perpetual fountain of domestic sweets,

Whose bed is undefil'd and chaste pronounc'd,
Present or past, as Saints and Patriarchs us'd.
Here Love his golden shafts employs, here lights
His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings.

The mischievous effects which the celibacy and solitude of monastic institutions produce on that passion which arises so spontaneously between the sexes in the human heart, will appear un

avoidable, when it is considered how absurdly the founders of these religious retreats have frequently endeavoured to guard against the dan ger. The partitions which divide the virtues from their opposite vices are so slender and conjoined, that we scarcely reach the limits of the one, before we enter, to a certain degree, the confines of the other. How ridiculous, therefore, is it to conceive, that frequent meditation on for. bidden pleasures, should be at all likely to era dicate impure ideas from the mind! And yet the Egyptian monastics were enjoined to have these rules continually in their contemplation: First, that their bosoms must remain unagitated by the thoughts of love; that they should never permit their fancies to loiter on voluptuous images; that female beauty, in its fairest form, and most glowing charms, should be incapable of exciting in their hearts the least sensation; and that, even during the hours of sleep, their minds should continue untainted by such impure affections. The chastity of these solitary beings was, on some occasions, actually tried by experiment; but the consequences which resulted from such irrational discipline, were directly the reverse of those it was intended to produce. The imagination was vitiated, and the inclination rendered so corrupt, that neither the examples nor the precepts of the more enlightened ages were able to correct their manners, or reclaim them from the machinations of the unclean spirit. Numberless, indeed, and horrid are the instances recorded by Ruffinus, and other writers, of the perversions of all sense and reason, of all delicacy and refinement, of all virtue and true holiness, which prevailed in the ascetic solitudes of every description, while the nuptial state was held incompatible with the duties of religion, and the sexes separated from each other, that they might more piously, and with less interrup.

tion, follow its dictates. Some of the fathers of the church defined female celibacy to be the only means of living a chaste and godly life amidst the impurities of a sinful world, and of regain. ing, during the perdition of gross mortality, the resemblance of the soul's celestial origin. The holy happy tie of matrimony they considered as a cloak to the indulgence of impure desires, and launched their anathemas against it as an hateful institution. Even the eloquent and pious Chrysostome says, "that a double purpose was intended to be attained by the institution of mar. riage, viz. the propagation of the species, and the gratification of sexual affection; but that, as population had sufficiently covered the face of the earth, the first had become no longer necessary and that it was the duty of the sexes rather to conquer their affections by abstinence and prayer, than indulge them under so thin a disguise." The human soul, he admits, must, in a state of celibacy, subsist under a perpetual warfare, and the faculties be in continual ferment; but contends, that piety exists in proportion to the difficulties which the sufferer surmounts. The holy fathers seem, from the whole strain of their exhortations and reasonings, to have considered female chastity in a very serious point of view; and there can be no doubt but that it is the brightest jewel and most becoming ornament of the sex; but these reverend teachers were so blinded by their zeal, that they lost all sight of nature, and mistakingly conceived that the Great Creator had planted affections in our hearts, and passions in our breasts, only to try our tempers, in suppressing their turbulence, rather than to promote our happiness, and to answer the ends of his creation, by a sober and rational indulgence of them.

But Nature will not be argued out of her rights; and these absurd doctrines introduced into every

« PreviousContinue »