cess; to abhor the least appearance of vice and indecency, and to fear doing any thing which will incur censure. An excess of modesty may be called bashfulness, and the want of it impertinence. There is a false or vicious modesty, which influences a man to do any thing that is ill or indiscreet; such as, through fear of offending his companions he runs into their follies or excesses; or it is a false modesty which restrains a man from doing what is good or laudable; such as being ashamed to speak of religion, and to be seen in the exercises of piety and devotion. eloquent preacher can give. Weneat or clean.. Modesty, thereshould behold the graves peopled fore, consists in purity of sentwith the victims of intemperance; ment and manners, inclining us we should behold those chambers of darkness hung round on every side with the trophies of luxury, drunkenness, and sensuality. So numerous should we find those martyrs of iniquity, that it may be safely asserted, where war or pestilence have slain their thousands, intemperate pleasure has slain its ten thousands.-5. There should be moderation in all our passions. This is peculiarly necessary, because there is no passion in human nature but what has of itself a tendency to run into exfor all passion implies a violent emotion of mind; of course, it is apt to derange the regular course of our ideas, and to produce confusion within. Of passion, therefore, we have great reason to beware. Moments of passion are always moments of delusion; nothing truly is what it then seems to be all the opinions which we then form are erroneous, and all the judgments which we pass are extravagant." Let us learn, therefore, to cultivate this disposition, remembering that it is a duty inculcated in the sacred scriptures, Phil. iv, 5. and essentially necessary to the felicity of our minds, and dignity of our characters. See Bishop Hall on Moderation; Morning Exercise at Cripplegate, ser. 16; Blair's Sermons, vol. iii, ser. 12; Toplady's Works, vol. iii, ser. 10. MODESTY is sometimes used to denote humility, and sometimes to express chastity. The Greek word Koor, modestus, signifies MOLINISTS, a sect in the Romish church who follow the doctrine and sentiments of the Jesuit Molina, relating to sufficient and efficacious grace. He taught that the operations of Divine grace were entirely consistent with the freedom of human will; and he introduced a new kind of hypothesis to remove the difficulties attending the doctrines of predestination and liberty, and to reconcile the jarring opinions of Augustines, Thomists, Semi-Pelagians, and other contentious divines. He affirmed that the decree of predestination to eternal glory was founded upon a previous knowledge and consideration of the merits of the elect; that the grace, from whose operation these merits are derived, is not. efficacious by its own intrinsic power only, but also by the consent of our own will, and because it is administered in those circum MONARCHIANS, the same as the Patripassians, which see. MONASTERY, a convent or house built for the reception of religious; whether it be abbey, priory, nunnery, or the like. stances in which the Deity, by In the years 1390, 1437, 1441, that branch of his knowledge 1459, 1497, 1505, 1508, and which is called scientia media, 1515, several other houses were foresees that it will be efficacious.dissolved, and their revenues setThe kind of prescience, denomi- tled on different colleges in Oxnated in the schools scientia media, ford and Cambridge. Soon after is that foreknowledge of future the last period, cardinal Wolsey, contingents that arises from an by licence of the king and pope, acquaintance with the nature and obtained a dissolution of above faculties of rational beings, of thirty religious houses for the the circumstances in which they founding and endowing his colshall be placed, of the objects leges at Oxford and Ipswich. that shall be presented to them, About the same time a bull was and of the influence which their granted by the same pope to cardicircumstances and objects must nal Wolsey to suppress monastehave on their actions. ries, where there were not above six monks, to the value of eight thousand ducats a year, for endowing Windsor and King's College in Cambridge; and two other bulls were granted to cardinals Wolsey and Campeius, where Monastery is only properly ap- there were less than twelve monks, plied to the houses of monks, men- and to annex them to the greater dicant friars, and nuns: the rest monasteries; and another bull to are more properly called religious the same cardinals to enquire houses. For the origin of monas- about abbeys to be suppressed in teries, see MONASTIC and MONK. order to he made cathedrals. Ak The houses belonging to the se- though nothing appears to have veral religious orders which ob- been done in consequence of these tained in England and Wales, bulls, the motive which induced were cathedrals, colleges, abbeys, Wolsey and many others to suppriories, preceptories, comman-press these houses was the desire dries, hospitals, friaries, hermit- of promoting learning; and archages, chantries, and free chap-bishop Cranmer engaged in it els. These were under the direc- with a view of carrying on the retion and management of various formation. There were other officers. The dissolution of houses of this kind began so early as the year 1312, when the Templars were suppressed; and in 1323, their lands, churches, advowsons, and liberties, here in England, were given, by 17 Edw. II, stat. 3, to the prior and brethren of the hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. causes that concurred to bring on their ruin: many of the religious were loose and vicious; the monks were generally thought to be in their hearts attached to the pope's supremacy; their revenues were not employed according to the intent of the donors; many cheats in images, feigned last, so far as any calculations ap- Of lesser monasteries, of Of greater monasteries, 374 186 48 90 110 Chantries and free chapels, 2374 miracles, and counterfeit relics, and jewels. The last act of dishad been discovered, which solution in this king's reign was brought the monks into disgrace; the act of 37 Hen. VIII, c. 4. the Observant Friars had opposed for dissolving colleges, free chathe king's divorce from queen Ca-pels, chantries, &c., which act tharine; and these circumstances was farther enforced by 1 Edw. operated, in concurrence with the VI, c. 14. By this act were supking's want of a supply and the pressed 90 colleges, 110 hospipeople's desire to save their mo- tals, and 2,374 chantries and free ney, to forward a motion in par- chapels. The number of houses liament, that, in order to sup-and places suppressed from first to port the king's state and supply his wants, all the religious houses might be conferred upon the crown which were not able to spend above 2001. a year; and an act was passed for that purpose, 27 Hen. VIII, c. 28. By this act about three hundred and eighty houses were dissolved, and a revenue of 30,000l. or 32,000l. a year came to the crown; besides about 100,000l. in plate and jewels. The suppression of these houses occasioned discontent, and at length an open rebellion: when besides the friars houses, and this was appeased, the king re- those suppressed by Wolsey, and solved to suppress the rest of the many small houses of which we monasteries, and appointed a new have no particular account. visitation, which caused the The sum total of the clear greater abbeys to be surrendered yearly revenue of the several apace and it was enacted by 31 houses at the time of their dissoHenry VIII, c. 13, that all mo-lution, of which we have any acnasteries which have been surren- count, seems to be as follows: dered since the 4th of February, in the twenty-seventh year of his majesty's reign, and which hereafter shall be surrendered, shall be vested in the king. knights of St. John of Jerusalem were also suppressed by the 32d Hen. VIII, c. 24. The suppression of these greater houses by these two acts produced a revenue to the king of above 100,000l. a year, besides a large sum in plate VOL. II. The X Of the greater mo Total, 3182 nasteries, £.104,919 13 31 Of all those of the lesser monasteries of which we have the valuation, . . . 29,702 1 101⁄2 Knights hospitallers, head house in London, 2,385 12 8 Carried over £.137,0.7 7 10 which we have Total, 47,721 If proper allowances are made for the lesser monasteries and houses not included in this estimate, and But as there were probably more for the plate, &c., which came than one person to officiate in seinto the hands of the king by the veral of the free chapels, and dissolution, and for the value of there were other houses which are money at that time, which was at not included within this calculaleast six times as much as at pre-tion, perhaps they may be comsent, and also consider that the puted in one general estimate at estimate of the lands was general-about 50,000. As there were ly supposed to be much under the real worth, we must conclude their whole revenues to have been immense. It does not appear that any computation hath been made of the number of persons contained in the religious houses. pensions paid to almost all those of the greater monasteries, the king did not immediately come into the full enjoyment of their whole revenues; however, by means of what he did receive, he founded six new bishoprics, viz. those of Westminster (which was changed by queen Elizabeth into a deanery, with twelve prebends and a school), Peterborough, Chester, Gloucester, Bristol, and Oxford, And in eight other sees he founded deaneries and chapters, by converting the priors and monks into deans and prebendaries, viz. Canterbury, Winchester, Durham, Worcester, Rochester, Norwich, Ely, and Carlisle. He founded also the colleges of Christ Church in Oxford, and Trinity in Cambridge, and finished King's College there. He likewise founded professorships of divinity,law, physic, and Carried up, 15,347 of the Hebrew and Greek tongues, Those of the lesser monas- 10,000 5,347 in both the said Universities. He gave the house of Grey Friars and St. Bartholomew's Hospital to the city of London, and a perpetual pension to the poor knights of Windsor, and laid out great sums in building and fortifying many ports in the channel. It is observable, upon the whole, that the dissolution of these houses was an act not of the church, but of the state, in the period preceding the reformation, by a king and parliament of the Roman Catholic communion in all points, except the king's supremacy; to which pope himself, by his bulls and licences, had led the way. the the poor, from every side of the country, waited the ringing of the alms-bell; when they flocked in crowds, young and old, to the gate of the monastery, where they received, every morning, a plentiful provision for themselves and their families:-all this appears great and noble. "On the other hand, when we consider five hundred persons bred up in indolence and lost to the commonwealth; when we consider that these houses were the great nurseries of superstition, bigotry, and ignorance; the stews of sloth, stupidity, and perhaps intemperance; when we consider that the education received in them had not the least tincture of useful learning, good manners, or true religion, but tended rather to vilify and disgrace the human mind; when we consider that the pilgrims and strangers who resort As to the merits of these institutions, authors are much divided. While some have considered them as beneficial to learning, piety, and benevolence, others have thought them very injurious. We may form some idea of them from the following remarks of Mr. Gil-ed thither were idle vagabonds,who pin. got nothing abroad that was equivalent to the occupations they left at home; and when we consider, lastly, that indiscriminate alms-giving is not real charity, but an avocation from labour and industry, checking every idea of exertion, and filling the mind with abject notions, we are led to acquiesce in the fate of these found He is speaking of Glastonbury Abbey, which possessed the amplest revenues of any religious house in England. "Its fraternity," says he, "is said to have consisted of five hundred established monks, besides nearly as many retainers on the abbey. Above four hundred children were not only educated in it, but entire-ations, and view their ruins, not ly maintained. Strangers from only with a picturesque eye, but all parts of Europe were liberally with moral and religious satisfacreceived, classed according to tion." Gilpin's Observations on the their sex and nation, and might Western Parts of England, p. 138, consider the hospitable roof un-139; Bigland's Letters on Hist., der which they lodged as their p. 313. own. Five hundred travellers, with their horses, have been lodged at once within its walls. While MONASTIC, something belonging to monks, or the monkish life. The monastic profession is a |