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The Heidenmauer; or, The Benedictines by the author of 'The pilot'.
The Heidenmauer or The Benedictines by the author of 'The pilot' Author:James Fenimore Cooper Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: reverence, the Benedictine was in a slight degree his dupe; though, as he passed beneath the low portal of the hut, he could not prevent a lurking suspicion of t... more »he truth. CHAPTER III. He comes at last in sudden loveliness, And whence they know not, why they need not gueu. Lara, In those ages in which moral wrongs were chiefly repaired by superstition, and the slaves of the grosser passions believed they were only to be rebuked by signal acts of physical self-denial, the world often witnessed examples of men retiring from its allurements to caves and huts for the ostensible purposes of penitence and prayer. That this extraordinary pretension to godliness was frequently the cloak of ambition and deceit is certain ; but it would be uncharitable to believe that, in common, it did not proceed from an honest, though it might be an ill-directed, zeal. Hermitages are still far from infrequent in the more southern parts of Europe, though they are of rare occurrence in Germany ; but, previously to the change of religion which occurred in the sixteenth century, and consequently near the period of this tale, they were perhaps more often met with among the descendants of the northern race, than among the more fervid fancies of the southern stock of that quarter of the world. It is a law of nature that the substances which most easily receive impressions are the least likely to retain them ; and possibly there may be requisite a constancy and severity of character to endure the never-ending and mortifying exactions of the anchorite, that were not so easily found among the volatile and happy children of the sun as among the sterner offspring of the regions of cold and tempests. Whatever may be said of the principles of him who thus abandoned worldly ease for the love of God, it is...« less