workmen might enhance the
intrinsic value of the work.

But the necessity of manual labor was insensibly superseded. The novice
was tempted to bestow his fortune on the saints, in whose society he
was resolved to spend the remainder of his life; and the pernicious
indulgence of the laws permitted him to receive, for their use, any
future accessions of legacy or inheritance. Melania contributed her
plate, three hundred pounds weight of silver; and Paula contracted
an immense debt, for the relief of their favorite monks; who kindly
imparted the merits of their prayers and penance to a rich and liberal
sinner. Time continually increased, and accidents could seldom diminish,
the estates of the popular monasteries, which spread over the adjacent
country and cities: and, in the first century of their institution, the
infidel Zosimus has maliciously observed, that, for the benefit of the
poor, the Christian monks had reduced a great part of mankind to a
state of beggary. As long as they maintained their original fervor, they
approved themselves, however, the faithful and benevolent stewards of
the charity, which was entrusted to their care. But their discipline was
corrupted by prosperity: they gradually assumed the pride of wealth,
and at last indulged the luxury of expense. Their public luxury might be
excused by the magnificence of religious worship, and the decent motive
of erecting durable habitations for an immortal society. But every age
of the church has accused the licentiousness of the degenerate monks;
who no longer remembered the object of their institution, embraced the
vain and sensual pleasures of the world, which they had renounced, and
scandalously abused the riches which had been acquired by the austere
virtues of their founders. Their natural descent, from such painful and
dangerous virtue, to the common vices of humanity, will not, perhaps,
excite much grief or indignation in the mind of a philosopher.

The lives of the primitive monks were consumed in penance and solitude;
undisturbed by the various occupations which fill the time, and exercise
the faculties, of reasonable, active, and social beings. Whenever
they were permitted to step beyond the precincts of the monastery, two
jealous companions were the mutual guards and spies of each other's
actions; and, after their return, they were condemned to forget, or,
at least, to suppress, whatever they had seen or heard in the world.
Strangers, who professed