Some of the notions to which the Fathers clung were these: That Christ would return and reign with the saints in Jerusalem in the flesh for a thousand years; that the angels had bodies and appetites; that Christ's body was not sensitive to the stripes and torments inflicted; that after death all should pass a fiery trial before the final judgment day; that God's Providence was confined only to men as rational creatures, but had nothing to do with the beasts of the field, with bugs and flies and worms; that marriage was in any circumstances a degrading institution, but a second marriage was accursed; that infants which die before baptism cannot be saved; that the baptism of heretics was invalid and null; that an oath was utterly unlawful for Christians to take; that our Saviour lived fifty years, and was not crucified at the age of thirty-three. CHAPTER VIII. _THE MONKS AND THEIR WAYS._ ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF MONACHISM. As early as the second century men and women began to feel the charm of a peaceful, contemplative life, wholly severed from the selfish, sensual, and brutish ways of large communities. Hence they were attracted to deserts and secluded places, and to seek happiness by living entirely alone. It is thought this turn of religious life was first developed in Egypt. About 378 St. Basil, afterwards Bishop of Cæsarea, introduced monachism into Asia Minor, and thence into the East, and he enjoined poverty, obedience, chastity, and self-mortification as the great objects to be kept in view. A peculiar habit was found to answer best to this kind of life. Both monks and nuns chose plain coarse clothes and girdles. The monks went barelegged, and their hair was more or less shaven. In 529 St. Benedict, an Italian of noble birth, instituted a code of conduct for his monastery on Monte Cassino, a hill between Rome and Naples, and added manual labour for seven hours a day. St. Augustine, the apostle to the Anglo-Saxons, about 596, belonged to the Benedictine order, and so did St. Dunstan, about 930. The habit of the Benedictines consisted of a white woollen cassock, and over that an ample black gown and a black hood. The female houses had also a white under-garment, a black gown and black veil, with a white wimple round the face and neck. The monks of Clugny, in Burgundy, founded in 927, abandoned manual labour and devoted themselves more to contemplative studies. The Clugniacs, the Carthusians, the Cistercians, and the orders of Camaldoli and Grandmont, all sprang from the Benedictine order, each having their own variations. St. Bernard joined the Cistercians in 1113. The Augustinians were a milder order than the Benedictines, and were divided into canons secular and canons regular. A branch of the Augustinians were the military orders, or Knights of the Temple, who arose about 1118, after the experience of the Crusaders, and devoted themselves to escorting pilgrims to Jerusalem and the holy places.