Section 101
The text on this page is estimated to be only 28.49% accurate
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 69 more powerful demonstrations, which is to be found among none but in the religion of Christians, according to the gospel. Our author also says, that there were also females that meet with those of whom we speak, of whom the most are aged maidens, preserving their purity, not by necessity, as some of the priest esses among the Greeks, but rather by a voluntary determination, in consequence of that zealous desire of wisdom, in the earnest pro secution of which, they disregard the pleasures of the body ; as they are desirous not of a mortal progeny but an immortal, which the heavenly mind alone is able to produce of itself." After a little, he also adds the following, with still greater stress. " But they expound the sacred writings by obscure, allegorical, and figurative expressions. Foi the whole law appears to these persons like an animal, of which the literal expressions are the body, but the invisible sense that lies enveloped in the expressions, the soul. This sense was first pre-eminently studied by this sect, discerning as through a mirror of names, the admirable beauties of the thoughts reflected." Why should we add to these their meetings, a,nd the separate abodes of the men and the women in these meetings, and the exercises performed by them, which are still in vogue among us at the present day, and which, especially at the festival of our Saviour's passion, we are accustomed to pass in fasting and watching, and in the study of the divine word? All these the abovementioned author has accurately described and stated in his writings, and are the same customs that are observed by us alone, at the present day, particularly the vigils of the great festival,* and the exercises in them, and the hymns that are commonly recited among us. He states that whilst one sings gracefully with a certain measure, the others, listening in silence, join in singing the final clauses of the hymns ; also, that on the abovementioned days, they lie on straw spread on the ground, and to use his own words, " they abstain altogether from wine, and taste no flesh. Water is their only drink, and the relish of their bread, salt and hyssop." Besides this, he describes the grades of dignity among those who administer the * The great festival.} Our author here speaks of the passion week, called by the Greek fathers, the Great Week,