We are reminded by the hermits of the Christian Church of those Stoic anchorites from whom they differed but little. We see in the work, which M. Aurelius has left as the record of his self-communings, the following observation on the fondness for seclusion among his fellow-philosophers. “They seek places of retreat for themselves, lone dwellings in the country, and the sea-shore, and the mountains.” Then he goes on to say to himself, “And thou thyself art wont most earnestly to long for such retreats[63].” This spirit of abstraction found, in the Church of Christ, more and more adherents as time wore on, and exacted a more absolute attention. We find from the writings of SS. Chrysostom, Cyprian, Jerome, Pachomius and Basil, how fast a hold it obtained of the minds of men. Basil was a student at Athens from A.D. 351 to A.D. 355, with Gregory Nazianzene and at the same time as the Emperor Julian. Philosophy doubtless still flourished there. We find Julian renouncing Christ altogether, for its sake. Basil, probably from the education which he received at the old home of Stoicism, was peculiarly in love with asceticism. He places before us the secluded life in its best light. We see how his ideas of piety were warped, however, by this spirit of asceticism. We hear him saying to a young monk, his disciple, “Hast thou left thy cell? Thou hast left there thy virtue.” “Shun the society of those of thine own age; yea, flee from it as from a burning flame.” “It is the devil’s craft,” he says (_Mon. Con._ Cap. XX.), “to keep alive in the mind of the monk a recollection of his parents and natural relatives, so that under colour of rendering them some aid, _he may be drawn aside from his heavenly course_.” He tells us that some objected to this, because the Apostle declared, “If a man provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own kindred, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” But he gives the Antinomian reply that a monk, being one of a peculiar class, was virtually dead to the world and to his duty in it; “As dead thou art free from all contributions for the benefit of thy natural relatives, and, as utterly a pauper, thou hast nothing which thou canst bestow.” This same spirit has continued to animate many parts of the Christian Church to this day. It has given rise to a vast variety of bodies, bound together by various rules, all more or less austere and unnatural. Among the Roman Catholics it has developed itself in the Trappists, the Jesuits, and other societies; and even in the English Church we have seen movements which tend to show that this spirit is confined within no certain limits, but exists in all quarters.