and St. Cuthbert, for they had been friends while they lived, and after death their memories were not divided. Forty days' indulgence was granted to every one who devoutly attended. What a happy holyday must that have been for all these vales; and how joyous on a fine spring day must the lake have appeared with boats and banners from every chapelry,.. and how must the chapel have adorned that little isle, giving a human and religious character to the solitude! Its ruins are still there, in such a state of total dilapidation that they only make the island, mere wilderness as it has now become, more melancholy. But St. Herbert, I think, could not hold a place in a reformed kalendar; the little that is related of him belongs to a legend grievously disfigured with fiction. Nor indeed do I think that merely to have been a hermit should entitle any one to respectful commemoration. SIR THOMAS MORE. Hermits, as well as Monks, Montesinos, have been useful in their day. Your state of society is not the better because it provides no places of religious retirement for those who desire and need it. the Religious Houses as the greatest evil that accompanied the Reformation. SIR THOMAS MORE. Take from such communities their irrevocable vows, their onerous laws, their ascetic practices; cast away their mythology, and with it the frauds and follies connected therewith, and how beneficial would they then be found! What opportunities would they afford to literature, what aid to devotion, what refuge to affliction, what consolation to humanity! MONTESINOS. And what relief to society, which, as it becomes more crowded in all its walks, and as education and intelligence are more and more diffused, must in every succeeding generation feel more pressingly the want of such institutions! Considering the condition of single women in the middle classes, it is not speaking too strongly to assert, that the establishment of Protestant nunneries, upon a wise plan and liberal scale, would be the greatest benefit that could possibly be conferred upon these kingdoms. The name, indeed, is deservedly obnoxious; for nunneries, such as they exist in Roman Catholic countries, and such as at this time are being re-established in this, are connected with the worst corruptions of popery, being at once nurseries of superstition and of misery. In their least objectionable point of view they serve as Bedlams, with this difference, that they are not intended for the cure, but for the promotion of religious madness. But they serve, also, as Penitentiaries, in which bigoted or hard-hearted and ambitious parents condemn their daughters to imprisonment for life. This dreadful abuse is so notorious, that such institutions would not be tolerated even in superstitions countries, unless some weighty advantages were found in them, whereof the great body of the people are sensible. And how easily might those advantages be obtained in communities founded upon the principles of our own Church, and liable to no such evils! SIR THOMAS MORE. The Reformation itself has rendered them more necessary, by relieving the clergy from their obligation to a single life. MONTESINOS. Sir Thomas, I can account for anything in your controversial writings, except for the sort of temper which manifests itself whenever you touch upon that point. SIR THOMAS MORE. O Montesinos! what errors are there which may not be explained by the frailty and the sin fulness of poor human nature? They who are under the direction of an erring conscience may, in a certain sense, properly be said to be possessed: wonder not, therefore, that the same possession which divested me of my natural humanity, should, in this other and more excusable point, have corrupted my judgment also! The angry feeling which I betrayed upon that subject had its rise partly in personal considerations. My early bent had been toward the ecclesiastical profession, and I was deterred from pursuing it only by the obligation of celibacy which it would have imposed. But looking always upon it as a holier way of life, and perhaps thinking sometimes that in certain respects it might have proved a happier one, some dis * " Quin et evolvendis orthodoxorum voluminibus non segnem operam impendit: Augustini libros de Civitate Dei 'publicè professus est adhuc penè adolescens auditorio frequenti; nec puduit, nec pœnituit sacerdotes ac senes à 'juvene profano sacra discere. Interim et ad pietatis studium totum animum appulit, vigiliis, jejuniis, precationibus, aliisque consimilibus progymnasmatis sacerdotium meditans. Quâ quidem in re non paulò plus ille sapiebat, quam plerique isti, qui temerè ad tam arduam professionem ingerunt sese, nullo priùs sui periculo facto. Neque quicquam obsta'bat quo minus sese huic vitæ generi addiceret, nisi quod • uxoris desiderium non posset excutere. Maluit igitur ma'ritus esse castus, quam sacerdos impurus.'-Erasm. Epist. L. x. Ep. 30. 536. satisfaction with myself was naturally felt when the subject of clerical celibacy was forced upon my attention. Our most unreasonable preju'dices are generally the strongest*.' I was not willing to admit that those persons who protested against this obligation, as being contrary both to the letter and spirit of the Scriptures, had perceived a plain and manifest truth,.. one, too, of great importance to society,.. where I had been blind; and I fell into the common fault (not the less reprehensible for being common) of imputing the worst motives to those from whom I differed in opinion. We carry our habits of mind with us from this world into the next, be they good or evil, and such as they are is the lot which they have prepared for us; but our errors are mortal, and for them there is no resurrection. Luther and I are friends and associates now, and Frith and Bainham have forgiven me...I offer no excuse for the means which I employed against the Reformers, farther than that, in that unhappy and unchristian course of conduct, I was acting in the spirit of the age. Be you thankful that your lot has fallen in times when, though there may be many evil tongues and exasperated spirits, there are none who have *Jonathan Boucher. |