by the Essenians, in
Palestine and Egypt. The philosophic eye of Pliny had surveyed with
astonishment a solitary people, who dwelt among the palm-trees near
the Dead Sea; who subsisted without money, who were propagated without
women; and who derived from the disgust and repentance of mankind a
perpetual supply of voluntary associates. [6]

[Footnote 2: See Euseb. Demonstrat. Evangel., (l. i. p. 20, 21, edit.
Graec. Rob. Stephani, Paris, 1545.) In his Ecclesiastical History,
published twelve years after the Demonstration, Eusebius (l. ii. c. 17)
asserts the Christianity of the Therapeutae; but he appears ignorant
that a similar institution was actually revived in Egypt.]

[Footnote 3: Cassian (Collat. xviii. 5.) claims this origin for the
institution of the Coenobites, which gradually decayed till it was
restored by Antony and his disciples.]

[Footnote 311: It has before been shown that the first Christian
community was not strictly coenobitic. See vol. ii.--M.]

[Footnote 4: These are the expressive words of Sozomen, who copiously
and agreeably describes (l. i. c. 12, 13, 14) the origin and progress
of this monkish philosophy, (see Suicer. Thesau, Eccles., tom. ii.
p. 1441.) Some modern writers, Lipsius (tom. iv. p. 448. Manuduct. ad
Philosoph. Stoic. iii. 13) and La Mothe le Vayer, (tom. ix. de la
Vertu des Payens, p. 228-262,) have compared the Carmelites to the
Pythagoreans, and the Cynics to the Capucins.]

[Footnote 5: The Carmelites derive their pedigree, in regular
succession, from the prophet Elijah, (see the Theses of Beziers, A.D.
1682, in Bayle's Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres, Oeuvres,
tom. i. p. 82, &c., and the prolix irony of the Ordres Monastiques,
an anonymous work, tom. i. p. 1-433, Berlin, 1751.) Rome, and the
inquisition of Spain, silenced the profane criticism of the Jesuits of
Flanders, (Helyot, Hist. des Ordres Monastiques, tom. i. p. 282-300,)
and the statue of Elijah, the Carmelite, has been erected in the church
of St. Peter, (Voyages du P. Labat tom. iii. p. 87.)]

[Footnote 6: Plin. Hist. Natur. v. 15. Gens sola, et in toto orbe
praeter ceteras mira, sine ulla femina, omni venere abdicata, sine
pecunia, socia palmarum. Ita per seculorum millia (incredibile dictu)
gens aeterna est in qua nemo nascitur. Tam foecunda illis aliorum vitae
poenitentia est. He places them just beyond the noxious influence of the
lake, and names Engaddi and Massada as the nearest towns. The Laura, an