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AND so the system of coenobites took its rise in the days of the
preaching of the Apostles. For such was all that multitude of believers in
Jerusalem, which is thus described in the Acts of the Apostles: "But the
multitude of believers was of one heart and one soul, neither said any of
them that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had
all things common. They sold their possessions and property and divided
them to all, as any man had need." And again: "For neither was there any
among them that lacked; for as many as possessed fields or houses, sold
them and brought the price of the things that they sold and laid them
before the feet of the Apostles: and distribution was made to every man as
he had need." The whole Church, I say, was then such as now are those
few who can be found with difficulty in coenobia. But when at the death of
the Apostles the multitude of believers began to wax cold, and especially
that multitude which had come to the faith of Christ from diverse foreign
nations, from whom the Apostles out of consideration for the infancy of
their faith and their ingrained heathen habits, required nothing more than
that they should" abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from
fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood," and so that
liberty which was conceded to the Gentiles because of the weakness of their
newly-born faith, had by degrees begun to mar the perfection of that Church
which existed at Jerusalem, and the fervour of that early faith cooled down
owing to the daily increasing number both of natives and foreigners, and
not only those who had accepted the faith of Christ, but even those who
were the leaders of the Church relaxed somewhat of that strictness. For
some fancying that what they saw permitted to the Gentiles because of their
weakness, was also allowable for themselves, thought that they would suffer
no loss if they followed the faith and confession of Christ keeping their
property and possessions. But those who still maintained the fervour of the
apostles, mindful of that former perfection left their cities and
intercourse with those who thought that carelessness and a laxer life was
permissible to themselves and the Church of God, and began to live in rural
and more sequestered spots, and there, in private and on their own account,
to practise those things which they had learnt to have been ordered by the
apostles throughout the whole body of the Church in general: and so that
whole system of which we have spoken grew up from those disciples who had
separated themselves from the evil that was spreading. And these, as by
degrees time went on, were separated from the great mass of believers and
because they abstained from marriage and cut themselves off from
intercourse with their kinsmen and the life of this world, were termed
monks or solitaries from the strictness of their lonely and solitary life.
Whence it followed that from their common life they were called coenobites
and their cells and lodgings coenobia. That then alone was the earliest
kind of monks, which is first not only in time but also in grace, and which
continued unbroken for a very long period up to the time of Abbot Paul and
Antony; and even to this day we see its traces remaining in strict
coenobia.
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