much less
virtue, could, even in the most enlightened period, have ever procured
him with the people.

[* Osberne, p. 95. M. West, p. 187.]

[** Osberne, p. 96.]

[*** Osberne, p. 97.]

Supported by the character obtained in his retreat, Dunstan appeared
again in the world; and gained such an ascendent over Edred who had
succeeded to the crown, as made him not only the director of that
prince's conscience, but his counsellor in the most momentous affairs of
government. He was placed at the head of the treasury,[*] and being thus
possessed both of power at court, and of credit with the populace,
he was enabled to attempt with success the most arduous enterprises.
Finding that his advancement had been owing to the opinion of his
austerity, he professed himself a partisan of the rigid monastic
rules; and after introducing that reformation into the convents of
Glastonbury and Abingdon, he endeavored to render it universal in the
kingdom.

The minds of men were already well prepared for this innovation. The
praises of an inviolable chastity had been carried to the highest
extravagance by some of the first preachers of Christianity among the
Saxons: the pleasures of love had been represented as incompatible with
Christian perfection; and a total abstinence from all commerce with the
sex was deemed such a meritorious penance, as was sufficient to atone
for the greatest enormities. The consequence seemed natural, that
those, at least, who officiated at the altar, should be clear of this
pollution; and when the doctrine of transubstantiation, which was now
creeping in,[**] was once fully established, the reverence to the real
body of Christ in the eucharist bestowed on this argument an additional
force and influence.

[* Osberne, p. 102. "Wallingford," p. 541,]

[** Spel. Concil. vol. i. p. 452.]

The monks knew how to avail themselves of all these popular topics, and
to set off their own character to the best advantage. They affected the
greatest austerity of life and manners; they indulged themselves in the
highest strains of devotion; they inveighed bitterly against the vices
and pretended luxury of the age; they were particularly vehement against
the dissolute lives of the secular clergy, their rivals; every instance
of libertinism in any individual of that order was represented as a
general corruption; and where other topics of defamation were wanting,
their marriage became a sure subjec