The Rules of the first religious Orders founded in the West, have been likewise silent as to the voluntary use of thongs and whips. The first Rule, for instance, prescribed to the Benedictines, that antient Western Order, does not mention a word about self-flagellation: and the same silence is to be observed in the Rules framed by Ovisiesius, Abbot of Tabennæ, by St. Aurelian, Bishop of Arles, by St. Isidorus, Bishop of Sevil, by St. Tetradius, and a number of others, whose Rules Holstenius has likewise collected. From thence we may therefore conclude, that Christians, in those times, had no notion of those beatings and scourgings which are now so prevalent; and that the _upper_ and the _lower_ disciplines were alike unknown among them[45]. The only Author of weight, in the days we speak of, who seems to have made any mention of voluntary flagellations being practised in the antient Monasteries, is St. John _Climax_, who, according to some accounts, lived in the middle of the fourth, and, according to others, only in the sixth Century. This Author relates, that, in a certain Monastery, ‘some, among the Monks, watered the pavement with their tears; while others, who could not shed any, _beat_ themselves[46].’ Several Writers have laid great stress on that passage, and quoted it as an undoubted proof of the antiquity of the practice of voluntary flagellation; yet I will take the liberty to dissent from their opinion, since other Writers have judged that St. John Climax only spoke in a figurative manner, and have translated the above passage, by saying that ‘those monks who could not shed tears, lamented themselves[47].’ Regard for truth, however, obliges us to mention one or two instances of flagellations, which are to be found in the history of the antient Eastern Anchorites, written by Theodoret, who has been abovementioned; but those instances are such, that certainly no argument can be derived from them, to prove that voluntary flagellations were in use in the times in which those Anchorites lived. One of those instances is to be found in the life of Abrahames. It is related in it, that the Christian populace having attempted to seize the sheets in which the body of that Saint was wrapped, the lictors drove them back with whips. Now, it is obvious to every one, that the lashes which these lictors bestowed, to and fro and at random, upon those men who beset them, were not willingly received by the latter. And the same may certainly with equal truth be observed of the flagellations inflicted upon the people (which is the second instance mentioned by Theodoret) by the Collectors of the public Tributes, who, he says, used to collect them with scourges and whips[48].