s and abilities, and
consult God, that he may best he able to learn the designs of his
providence with regard to his soul; in doing which, a great purity of
intention is the first requisite. Ease and enjoyment must not be the end
of Christian retirement, but penance, labor, and assiduous
contemplation; without great fervor and constancy in which, close
solitude is the road to perdition. If greater safety, or an unfitness
for a public station, or a life of much business (in which several are
only public nuisances) may be just motives to some for embracing a life
of retirement, the means of more easily attaining to perfect virtue may
be such to many. Nor do true contemplatives bury their talents, or cease
either to be members of the republic of mankind, or to throw in their
mite towards its welfare. From the prayers and thanksgivings which they
daily offer to God for the peace of the world, the preservation of the
church, the conversion of sinners, and the salvation of all men,
doubtless more valuable benefits often accrue to mankind, than from the
alms of the rich, or the labors of the learned. Nor is it to be
imagined, how far and how powerfully their spirit, and the example of
their innocence and perfect virtue, often spread their influence; and
how serviceable persons who lead a holy and sequestered life may be to
the good of the world; nor how great glory redounds to God, by the
perfect purity of heart and charity to which many souls are thus raised.

Footnotes:
1. See Le Brun, Explic. des Ceremonies de la Messe, t. 4, pp. 234-235,
dissert. l. 4, art. 2.

ST. HYGINUS, P. AND M.

HE was placed in the chair of St. Peter after the martyrdom of St.
Telesphorus, in the year 139. Eusebius informs us,[1] that he sat four
years. The church then enjoyed some sort of calm, under the mild reign
of the emperor Antoninus Pius; though several martyrs suffered in his
time by the fury of the populace, or the cruelty of certain magistrates.
The emperor himself never consented to such proceedings; and when
informed of them by the governors of Asia, Athens, Thessalonica, and
Larissea, he wrote to them in favor of the Christians, as is recorded by
St. Justin and Eusebius.[2]

But the devil had recourse to other arts to disturb the peace of God's
church. Cerdo, a wolf in sheep's clothing, in the year 140, came from
Syria to Rome, and began to teach the false principles which Marcion
adopted afterward with more success. He impio