salem for a small portion of the austere penitents, who
were deprived of their senses. Their visions, before they attained this
extreme and acknowledged term of frenzy, have afforded ample materials
of supernatural history. It was their firm persuasion, that the
air, which they breathed, was peopled with invisible enemies; with
innumerable demons, who watched every occasion, and assumed every
form, to terrify, and above all to tempt, their unguarded virtue. The
imagination, and even the senses, were deceived by the illusions of
distempered fanaticism; and the hermit, whose midnight prayer was
oppressed by involuntary slumber, might easily confound the phantoms
of horror or delight, which had occupied his sleeping and his waking
dreams.

The monks were divided into two classes: the _Cnobites_, who lived under
a common and regular discipline; and the _Anachorets_, who indulged
their unsocial, independent fanaticism. The most devout, or the most
ambitious, of the spiritual brethren, renounced the convent, as they had
renounced the world. The fervent monasteries of Egypt, Palestine, and
Syria, were surrounded by a _Laura_, a distant circle of solitary cells;
and the extravagant penance of Hermits was stimulated by applause and
emulation. They sunk under the painful weight of crosses and chains; and
their emaciated limbs were confined by collars, bracelets, gauntlets,
and greaves of massy and rigid iron. All superfluous encumbrance of
dress they contemptuously cast away; and some savage saints of both
sexes have been admired, whose naked bodies were only covered by their
long hair. They aspired to reduce themselves to the rude and miserable
state in which the human brute is scarcely distinguishable above his
kindred animals; and the numerous sect of Anachorets derived their name
from their humble practice of grazing in the fields of Mesopotamia with
the common herd. They often usurped the den of some wild beast whom
they affected to resemble; they buried themselves in some gloomy cavern,
which art or nature had scooped out of the rock; and the marble quarries
of Thebais are still inscribed with the monuments of their penance. The
most perfect Hermits are supposed to have passed many days without food,
many nights without sleep, and many years without speaking; and glorious
was the _man_ ( I abuse that name) who contrived any cell, or seat, of a
peculiar construction, which might expose him, in the most inconvenient
posture,