system.... Brahmanism has its order of ascetics....
Mohammedanism has its fakirs, subduing the flesh by their austerities,
and developing the spirit by their contemplation and prayers. Fasting
and self-denial were observances required of the Greeks, who desired
initiation into the mysteries.... The scourge was used before the altars
of Artemis and over the tomb of Pelops. The Egyptian priests passed
their novitiate in the deserts, and when not engaged in their religious
functions were supposed to spend their time in caves. They renounced all
commerce with the world, and lived in contemplation, temperance, and
frugality, and in absolute poverty.... The Peruvians were required to
fast before sacrificing to the gods, and to bind themselves by vows of
chastity and abstinence from nourishing food.... There were ascetic
orders for old men and nunneries for widows among the Totomacs, monastic
orders among Toltecs dedicated to the service of Quetzalcoatl, and
others among the Aztecs consecrated to Tezcatlipoca."[165]

It was argued by Bingham, a learned eighteenth-century ecclesiastical
historian, that although asceticism was known and practised in
individual cases from the earliest period of Christian history, it did
not establish itself within the Church until the fourth century. It is
not a matter of great consequence to the subject under discussion
whether this be so or not. It is at least certain that Christian
teaching contained within itself all the elements for such a
development, which was bound, sooner or later, to transpire. The
antithesis between the flesh and the spirit, the conception of the world
as given over to Satan, the ascetic teaching of Paul, with the value
placed upon suffering and privation as spiritually disciplinary forces,
could not but create in a society permeated with a special type of
supernaturalism, that asceticism which became so marked a feature of
medieval Christianity. And it is certain also that in no other instance
has asceticism proved itself so grave a danger to social order and
security. Allowing for what Lecky calls the 'glaring mendacity' of the
lives of the saints, a description that applies more or less to all the
ecclesiastical writings of the early centuries, it is evident that the
number of monks, their ferocity, and general practices, were enough to
constitute a grave social danger. It is said that St. Pachomius had 7000
monks under his direct rule; that in the time of Jerome 50