nthropomorphism in the church.

There was also another cause which seems to have greatly contributed to
the propagation of the abovementioned anthropomorphism amongst the
Christians, namely, the contemplative life of the hermits, particularly of
those who inhabited the burning deserts of Egypt. It has been observed of
these monks, by Zimmerman, in his celebrated work on Solitude, that "men
of extraordinary characters, and actuated by strange and uncommon
passions, have shrunk from the pleasures of the world into joyless gloom
and desolation. In savage and dreary deserts they have lived a solitary
and destitute life, subjecting themselves to voluntary self-denials and
mortifications almost incredible; sometimes exposed in nakedness to the
chilling blasts of the winter cold, or the scorching breath of summer's
heat, till their brains, distempered by the joint operation of tortured
senses and overstrained imagination, swarmed with the wildest and most
frantic visions."(8) The same writer relates, on the authority of
Sulpicius Severus, that an individual had been roving about Mount Sinai
nearly during fifty years, entirely naked, and avoiding all intercourse
with men. Once, however, being inquired about the motives of his strange
conduct, he answered, that, "enjoying as he did the society of seraphim
and cherubim, he felt aversion to intercourse with men."(9)

Many of these enthusiasts imagined, in their hallucinations, they had a
direct intercourse with God himself, who, as well as the subordinate
spirits, appeared to them in a human shape. The monks of Egypt were,
indeed, the most zealous defenders of the corporeality of God. They
violently hated Origines for his maintaining that He was spiritual.
Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, opposed this error; but the monks
assembled in great force, with the intention of murdering him; and he
escaped this danger by addressing them in the words which Jacob used to
Esau, "I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God."--(Gen.
xxxiii 10.) This compliment, which could be interpreted as an
acknowledgment of a corporeal God, appeased the wrath of the monks, but
they compelled Theophilus to anathematise the writings of Origines.

The following anecdote is characteristic of the strong tendency of human
nature towards anthropomorphism. An old monk, called Serapion, having been
convinced by the arguments of a friend that it was an error to believe God
corporeal, exclaimed, weep