The early monks attracted the notice of the people by the rigid exercise of their devotions. The greater part of them passed their time in deserted places, in divine contemplation, and in the acquisition of useful knowledge; in consequence of which, they began to be venerated and considered as heavenly-minded men, approaching to the perfection of angels; but in the course of time, and on this very account, their reclusion, and the regard in which they were held, soon induced multitudes to betake themselves to the same courses of life, though not with the same views; as being more profitable than the remuneration resulting from their own homely and industrious avocations. The numbers that embraced this profession became at length so overwhelming and intolerant, that factions burst out amongst them, to which the spirit of the people soon became subject, and to cause grievous disturbances thereby, both to church and state. Many of the wandering hordes, under the denomination of monks, are represented by Gregory Nazianzen, as crews of ruffians and banditti, rather than as sober-minded men, professing a scrupulous morality, with a view to the amelioration of society and the welfare of mankind in general. They were cruel, rapacious, insinuating, cunning, and not unfrequently malignant in the extreme, indulging in the vilest propensities that shock and disgust human nature; and if we may believe their contemporaries, no species of vice was unknown to, or left unpractised by them. The first dawn of monkish influence and power in the western world, was ushered in by St. Jerome, who, though represented as a very pious and good man, but having some passions the world had not yet gratified, grew wroth with and retired into the east, where he turned monk; and, as if to be revenged of the ungrateful world, he openly professed, that it were hardly possible to receive salvation in it without adopting the same course as he had done, that was, to become a monk. And although thus far monkery had its way paved in the west by the resolutions of Jerome, it was many years after his death, before any order of monkhood was instituted in that quarter. Benedict, who lived about an hundred years after St. Jerome, being reckoned the father of the order in the western parts, and although it does not appear that he formed any order of monks, with the three vows, yet since the oldest monkish order in the Roman church is called by his name, we shall give first a short sketch of him and his order; leaving the reader to take, as well in this instance as in those that follow, as much for granted as he can well swallow, without danger of being choked.