e the Savior's birth, not only the
Essenes and Therapeutae--those Jewish sects, composed of persons with a
morbid melancholy, or rather partially deranged--had their chief
residence; but many others also, that they might better please the gods,
withdrew themselves as by the instinct of nature from commerce with men
and with all pleasures of life. From Egypt this mode of life passed into
Syria and the neighboring countries, which in like manner always
abounded with unsociable and austere individuals: and from the East it
was at last introduced among the nations of Europe. Hence the numerous
maladies which still deform the Christian world; hence the celibacy of
the clergy; hence the numerous herds of monks; hence the two species of
life, the theoretical and mystical." (_Eccles. Hist.,_ I, 128 f.)

One may well feel pity for the original monks. Their zeal was heroic,
but it was spent upon an issue that is in its very root and core a
haughty presumption and a lie. Exhaust all the Scripture-texts which
speak of indwelling sin, of the lust that rages in our members, of the
duty to keep the body under by fasting and vigilance, and there will not
be found enough Bible to cover the nakedness of the monastic principle.
Its fundamental thought of a select type of piety to be attained by
spectacular efforts at self-mortification flies in the face of the
doctrine that we are rid of sin and sanctified by divine grace alone.
Monkish holiness is a slander of the Redeemer's all-sufficient sacrifice
for sin and of the work of the Holy Spirit. It started in paganism, and
wants to drag Christianity back into paganism.

But monasticism in Luther's day was no longer of the sort which one may
view with a pathetic interest. The old monastic ideals had been largely
abandoned. Instead of crucifying the flesh, the monks were nursing and
fondling carnal-mindedness. The cloisters had become cesspools of
corruption. Because the reputation of monks was utterly bad, and monks
were publicly scorned and derided, Luther's friends tried to dissuade
him from entering the cloister. That was the reason, too, why Luther's
father was so deeply shocked when he heard of what his Martin had done,
and Luther had to assure his father that he had not gone into the herd
of monks to seek what people believed men sought in that profligate
company. For that reason, too, he had chosen the Augustinian order,
because a strong reform movement had been started in that order,