Note 47 — CHAP. VIII.

The above passage of St. Climax, like those of David and St. Paul, discussed in the 2d and 3d Chapters, has caused much disputation between the Assertors, and the Opposers, of the doctrine of the antiquity of voluntary flagellations. The Abbé Boileau has taken much pains, in his text, to prove that St. John Climax, notwithstanding the precision of the expression he has used, only meant to speak in a figurative sense; and he has for that purpose produced a number of authorities from different books, and entered into a long grammatical dissertation on the Greek words used by that Saint, in which he at last bewilders himself, and says the very reverse of what he had promised to prove. He has also bestowed some pains on different passages of other Greek fathers, which are as positive as that quoted from St. John Climax; and among others, upon one of St. Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, who expresses himself with great clearness, and says, he whips himself, and exhorts his friends to do the same.

However, notwithstanding the great precision of the words used by the above good Fathers, whether in speaking of themselves, or of other persons, we are not perhaps intirely to refuse to admit the assertions of the Abbé Boileau, that they only spoke in a figurative sense. It is not absolutely impossible that the passages which are quoted from them, though ever so expressly mentioning flagellations, beatings, and scourgings, were no more, after all, than canting ways of expression, like those commonly used by men who affect pretensions to superior sanctity; who take every opportunity of magnifying their sufferings, or those of their friends, though often of an imaginary kind. However, on this important subject, I shall leave the Reader to determine: I will only observe, that the most zealous Supporters of self-flagellation confess, that the same was never so much practised among the Eastern as among the Western Christians, as they had adopted several other means of self-mortification.