irreproachable piety; but, impelled, we are told, by her desire for a more austere life, she fled from her companion, assumed a male attire, took refuge among the monks on the Mount of Olives, and, with something of the skill of her old profession, supported her feigned character so consistently that she acquired great renown, and it was only (it is said) after her death that the saints discovered who had been living among them.(270) The foregoing anecdotes and observations will, I hope, have given a sufficiently clear idea of the general nature of the monastic life in its earliest phase, and also of the writings it produced. We may now proceed to examine the ways in which this mode of life affected both the ideal type and the realised condition of Christian morals. And in the first place, it is manifest that the proportion of virtues was altered. If an impartial person were to glance over the ethics of the New Testament, and were asked what was the central and distinctive virtue to which the sacred writers most continually referred, he would doubtless answer that it was that which is described as love, charity, or philanthropy. If he were to apply a similar scrutiny to the writings of the fourth and fifth centuries, he would answer that the cardinal virtue of the religious type was not love, but chastity. And this chastity, which was regarded as the ideal state, was not the purity of an undefiled marriage. It was the absolute suppression of the whole sensual side of our nature. The chief form of virtue, the central conception of the saintly life, was a perpetual struggle against all carnal impulses, by men who altogether refused the compromise of marriage. From this fact, if I mistake not, some interesting and important consequences may be deduced.