the busy, practical Martha, and to the voluntary community of goods in the first Christian church in Jerusalem. ' So Jerome, Ep. 49 (ed. Ben.), ad Paulinum, where he adduces, besides Eliji^h and John, Isaiah also and the sons of the prophets, as the fathers of monasticism ; and in his Vita Pauli, where, however, he more correctly designates Paul of Thebes and Anthony as the first hermits, properly so called, in distinction from the prophets. Comp. also Sozomen : H. E., 1. i. c. 12 : TavTTjs 5e t;|s aplcrrris <pi\oao<p[as ijp^aro, (is Tives Kiyovcriv, 'HAitts 6 irpoiJJTjTTjy ko.\ '\(ijavvy\s o ^aTrrtcrTrjs. This appeal to the example of Ehjah and John the Baptist has become traditional with Catholic writers on the subject. Alban Butler says, under Jan. 15, in the life of Paul of Thebes : " Elias and John the Baptist sanctified the deserts, and Jesus Christ him- self was a model of the eremitical state during his forty days' fast in the wilderness ; neither is it to be questioned but the Holy Ghost conducted the saint of this day (Paul of Thebes) into the desert, and was to him an instructor there." ^ Hence called consilia evangelica, in distinction from mandata divina ; after 1 Cor. vii. 25, where Paul does certainly make a similar distinction. The consilium and votum paupertatis is based on Matt. xix. 21 ; the votum castitatis, on 1 Cor. vii. i^, 25, 3S-40. For the votum obedientice no particular text is quoted. The theory appears substantially as early as in Origen, and was in him not merely a personal opinion, but the reflex of a very widely spread practice. Comp. vol. i. § 94 and 95. VOL. 11. — II 162 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. But this monastic interpretation of primitive Christianity mistakes a few incidental points of outward resemblance for essential identity, measures the spirit of Christianity by some isolated passages, instead of explaining the latter from the former, and is upon the whole a miserable emaciation and caricature. The gospel makes upon all men virtually the same moral demand, and knows no distinction of a religion for the masses and another for the few. Jesus, the model for all believers, was neither a coenobite, nor an anchoret, nor an ascetic of any kind, but the perfect pattern man for universal imitation. There is not a trace of monkish austerity and ascetic rigor in his life or precepts, but in all his acts and words a wonderful harmony of freedom and purity, of the most comprehensive charity and spotless holi- ness. He retired to tlie mountains and into solitude, but only temporarily, and for the purpose of renewing his strength for active work. Amidst the society of his disciples, of both sexes, with kindred and friends, in Cana and Bethany, at the table of publicans and sinners, and in intercourse with all classes of the people, he kept himself unspotted from the world, and trans- figured the world into tlie