Willoughby. The monks took the opposite course. While the Parliamentarian soldier was often seen endeavouring to adapt his life to a mistaken application of the Bible, the ascetic endeavoured to adapt the Bible to his mistaken life.
Gower. The New Testament not authorising the austerities of a Macarius or a Maximus, tradition must be called in——
Willoughby. And side by side with tradition, mystical interpretation. The Bible, it was pretended, must not be understood as always meaning what it seems to mean.
Atherton. It then becomes the favourite employment of the monk to detect this hidden meaning, and to make Scripture render to tradition the same service which the mask rendered to the ancient actor, not only disguising the face, but making the words go farther. To be thus busied was to secure two advantages at once; he had occupation for his leisure, and an answer for his adversaries.
CHAPTER V.
Oh! contemplation palls upon the spirit,
Like the chill silence of an autumn sun:
While action, like the roaring south-west wind,
Sweeps, laden with elixirs, with rich draughts
Quickening the wombed earth.