About this time, too, the idea of penitential seclusion was prevalent in the West, stimulated by the writings and opinions of St. Augustine and St. Jerome. It has been suggested that the doctrine of asceticism was founded upon the words of Christ, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." [Footnote 30] St. Gregory himself dwells with peculiar emphasis upon this passage, which he expounds thus, "Let us listen to what he said in this passage--let him who will follow me deny himself; in another place it is said that we should forego our possessions; here it is said that we should deny _ourselves_, and perhaps it is not laborious to a man to relinquish his possessions, but it is very laborious to relinquish _himself_. For it is a light thing to abandon what one has, but a much greater thing to abandon what _one is_." [Footnote 31] Fired by the notion of self-mortification imparted to these words of Christ by their own material interpretation, these men forsook the world and retired to caves, rocks, forests, anywhere out of sight of {152} their fellow-mortals--lived on bitter herbs and putrid water, exposed themselves to the inclemency of the winter and the burning heats of summer. [Footnote 30: Matt. xvi. 24.] [Footnote 31: St. Greg. Hom, 32 in Evangel.] Such was the rise and working of asceticism, which brought out so many anchorites and hermits. Few things in the history of human suffering can parallel the lives of these men. As regards conventual life, that is, the assemblage of those who ministered in the church under one roof, sharing all things in common, that may be traced back to the apostles and their disciples, who were constrained to live in this way, and, therefore, we find that wherever they established a church, there they also established a sort of college, or common residence, for the priests of that church. This is evident from the epistles of Ignatius, nearly all, of which conclude with a salutation addressed to this congregation of disciples, dwelling together, and styled a "collegium." His epistle to the Church at Antioch concludes thus, "I salute the sacred College of Presbyters" (Saluto Sanctum Presbyterorum Collegium). The Epistle ad Philippenses, "Saluto S. Episcopum et sacrum Presbyterorum Collegium"--so also the epistles to the Philadelphians, the Church at Smyrna, to the Ephesians, and to the Trallians.