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THE CULT OF ASCETICISM & RENUNCIATION
ascetic Christians as distinguished from the “vulgar” renounced all the pleasures of life and duties of society. They lived on coarse and scanty food, begged or voluntarily offered. Their food excluded meat, and drink excluded wine. They practised celebacy. No marriage was allowed. Body and mind were mortified by all sorts of cruel device. Natural inclinations of body as well as of mind (love, affection, cheerfulness, rest, recreation etc.) were condenincd as vices. Monasticism was rampant. Thousands and thousands of “ascetics fled from a profane and degenerate world to perpetual solitude or religious society.
They resigned the use of the property of their temporal possessions....... They soon acquired the respect of the world which they despised ; and loudest applause was bestowed on their divine philosophy which suppressed, without the aid of science or reason, the laborious virtucs of the Grecian schools”. (Ibid.)
A critical historian should have the courage to depict a similar picture of the ancient and mediacval India. Not only that is not done, but similar practices are still extolled as highly commendable with sublime indifference to science and reason.
Not only did Christianity preach asceticism and renunciation of the world as virtues. Previously, the Pythagoreans had practised silence and submission as the gates of wisdom. With the
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