ceased. The many branches of the Franciscan Order, Capuchins, Recollects, Reformed, Conventuals, and Observants, mark so many different schisms over the perpetual quarrel; yet, at the present day, they are all once more on a common level. And, apart from this internal evidence, secular history gives abundant proof of the periods of deep degradation into which the orders of monks have periodically fallen; if secular historians are not trusted, a judicious selection of papal decrees and episcopal letters would place the fact beyond controversy.
Hence it is only natural to expect that, in these days of less luminous and tranquil faith and less fervid imagination, the spirit of monasticism will be less potent than ever—the more so as a large section of Christianity has now repudiated the ascetical ideal entirely, and emphatically dissociated it from the teaching of Christ. Protestantism first fell upon monasticism, flail in hand, for its corruption, and nearly extinguished it; then it sought theological justification, and convinced itself that monasticism was unscriptural. Although, it is curious to add, there have been many vain attempts in modern days to reanimate it, the vast majority of non-Catholics persist in regarding monasticism as founded on an exegetical error and humanly unjustifiable; and that conviction, together with the causes that produced it or occasioned its formation, has re-acted on the old Church. That mental attitude which in former ages
