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Ancient Christianity and the Doctrines of the Oxford Tracts
Ancient Christianity and the Doctrines of the Oxford Tracts Author:Isaac Taylor General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1840 Original Publisher: Herman Hooker Subjects: Church history Oxford movement Tracts for the times (London, England) Celibacy Religion / Christianity / Anglican Religion / Christianity / History Religion / Christian Theology / General Religion / Christian T... more »heology / Systematic Religion / Monasticism Religion / Christianity / Denominations Religion / Christian Church / History Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: MORAL QUALITY OF THE ASCETIC INSTITUTE, AS IT AFFECTED THE MONKS THEMSELVES. The evidence of history forgotten, and our better Christian notions laid aside, it is then easy for an ardent and serious mind to follow the hermit into his wilderness, or the monk into his cloister, with a vivid sympathy. In fact, the real difficuhy with persons of imaginative temperament, is to repress that yearning of the soul for seclusion and meditation, which impels them to enter upon the same llowery path. There are those, and it ia more than a very few, to whom the course of self- denial is -- the continuing to live in the midst of the turmoil, the duties, and the enjoyments of common life; and to whom the course of self-indulgence would be that of dreaming existence away in a cloister, or on the sunny side of a mountain, far remote from the haunts of man. He is the Epicurean, who surrenders himself to the leading of his personal tastes, without regard to duty, or to the welfare of others: now, these tastes may be of a sensual kind, or they may be imaginative, or they may be intellectual, or they may be a mixture of all, and we may call them religious; but surely a wonderful mistake rests with those who, while they are giving an unbridled ...« less