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Updated: May 6, 2025
"Never, never!" he said; "I will never do it so long as breath is in my body." In his repentance he mortified himself with new self-expiations. He suspended himself from the service of the altar. He was overwhelmed with grief, shame, rage, and penitence. He resolved he would not yield up the privileges of his order, come what might, not even if the Pope gave him authority to sign.
After the love of God had subdued their hearts, we read but little of penances, or self-expiations, or forms of worship, or church ceremonies, or priestly rigors, or any of the slaveries and formalities which bound ordinary people. Their piety was mystical, sometimes visionary, and not always intelligible, but deep, sincere, and lofty.
Did he realize fully that from his descendants should arise the religious teachers of mankind, not only the prophets and sages of the Old Testament, but the apostles and martyrs of the New, planting in every land the seeds of the everlasting gospel, which should finally uproot all Brahminical self-expiations, all Buddhistic reveries, all the speculations of Greek philosophers, all the countless forms of idolatry, polytheism, pantheism, and pharisaism on this earth, until every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father?
Armies of monks retired to gloomy and isolated places, and abandoned themselves to rhapsodies and fastings and self-expiations, in opposition to the grand doctrine of Christ's expiation. They despaired of society, and abandoned the world to its fate a dismal and fanatical set of men, overlooking the practical aims of life.
Hence celibacy, and avoidance of the society of women, all to resist most dangerous temptation. Hence the vows of poverty and chastity which early entered monastic life, a life favorable to ascetic virtues. These were indeed perverted. Everything good is perverted in this world. Self-expiations, flagellations, sheepskin cloaks, root dinners, repulsive austerities, followed.
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