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according to the signification of the word, was appropriated to the chosen portion that had been set apart for the service of religion; a celebrated order of men which has furnished the most important, though not always the most edifying, subjects for modern history. Their mutual hostilities sometimes disturbed the peace of the infant church; but their zeal and activity were united in the common cause; and the love of power, which (under the most artful disguises) could insinuate itself into the breasts of bishops and martyrs, animated them to increase the number of their subjects, and to enlarge the limits of the christian empire. They were destitute of any temporal force, and they were for a long time discouraged and oppressed, rather than assisted, by the civil magistrate; but they had acquired, and they employed within their own society, the two most efficacious instruments of government, rewards and punishments; the former derived from the pious liberality, the latter from the devout apprehensions, of the faithful.
I. The community of goods, which had so agreeably amused the imagination of Plato[1], and which subsisted in some degree among the austere sect of the Essenians[2], was adopted for a short time in the primitive church. The fervour of the first proselytes prompted them to sell those worldly possessions which they despised, to lay the price of them at the feet of the apostles, and to content themselves with receiving an equal share out of the general distribution[3]. The progress of the christian religion relaxed, and gradually abolished this generous institution, which, in hands less pure than those of the apostles, would too soon have been corrupted and abused by the returning selfishness
- ↑ n The community instituted by Plato, is more perfect than that which sir Thomas More had imagined for his Utopia. The community of women, and that of temporal goods, may be considered as inseparable parts of the same system.
- ↑ o Joseph. Antiquitat. xviii. 2 ; Philo de Vit. Contemplativ.
- ↑ p See the Acts of the Apostles, c. 2. 4, 5, with Grotius's Commentary. Rlosheim, in a particular dissertation, attacks the common opinion with very inconclusive arguments.
