The dictates of good sense are often curiously intermingled in the writings of the fathers with the defence of the absurd system they espoused. The incongruous mixture, has it not been of frequent occurrence in every age? Cyril of Jerusalem, in the fourth of his Catechetical Discourses, and in the section περι σωματος, with great vigor and propriety urges the consideration referred to above, while reprehending those, in his time, who affected to despise and maltreat the body. "Is not the body," says he, "the excellent workmanship of God?" and he reminds the ascetic that it is the soul, not the body, that sins. He goes on, in a lively manner, to hold forth the mean of wisdom between opposite extremes; and while he much commends the monkish celibacy, nevertheless bestows upon matrimony its due praise. The fathers, by appropriating the words _continence_, _chastity_, _temperance_, _virtue_, to the monastic life, robbed the Christian community of that standard of morals which belongs to all. Our Lord and his apostles enjoined purity, and continence, and temperance, and heavenly-mindedness, upon Christians universally, married and unmarried, engaged or not engaged, in the affairs of common life. But the monks shuddered to talk of purity and celibacy as if separable. What part then could the married claim in the practical portions of Scripture? These holy precepts were the property of the _elect of Christ_, that is, of the monks. Such are the consequences of extravagance in religion! The story of Symeon Stylites, told by Theodoret, has been often repented. The well-attested exploits of the fakirs of India render this, and many similar accounts related by the same writer, by Gregory Nyssen, Sozomen, &c., perfectly credible in all but a few of the particulars; and in these it is evident that the writers were imposed upon. The fasts professed to have been undergone by Symeon, by Anthony, and by others of tho same class, most certainly surpass the powers of human nature; and must be held either to convict those monks and their accomplices of fraud, or their biographers of falsehood. * * * * *