The influence of monasticism upon the doctrine of atonement for sin was, in many respects, prejudicial to the best interests of religion.  The monks are largely responsible for the theory that sin can be atoned for by pecuniary gifts.  It may be said that they did not ignore true feelings of repentance, of which the gold was merely a tangible expression, but the notion widely prevailed that the prayers of the monks, purchased by temporal gifts, secured the forgiveness of the transgressor.  The worship of saints, pilgrimages to shrines, and reverence for bones and other relics, were assiduously encouraged.

Thus the monkish conception of salvation and of the means by which it is to be obtained were at variance with any reasonable interpretation of the Scriptures and the dictates of human reason.  “It measured virtue,” says Schaff, “by the quantity of outward exercises, instead of the quality of the inward disposition, and disseminated self-righteousness and an anxious, legal, and mechanical religion[K].”

[Footnote K:  Appendix, Note K.]

The doctrine of future punishment reached its most repulsive and abnormal developments in the hands of the monks.  A vast literature was produced by them, portraying, with vivid minuteness, the pangs of hell.  Volcanoes were said to be the portals of the lower world, that heaved and sighed as human souls were plunged into the awful depths.  God was held up as a fearful judge, and the saving mercy of Christ himself paled before the rescuing power of his mother.  These fearful caricatures of God, these detailed, revolting descriptions of pain and anguish, could not but have a hardening effect upon the minds of men.  “To those,” says Lecky, “who do not regard these teachings as true, it must appear without exception, the most odious in the religious history of the world, subversive of the very foundations of Christianity.”

Finally, the greatest error of monastic teaching was in its false and baneful distinction between the secular and the religious.  Unquestionably the Christian ideal is founded on some form of world-renunciation.  The teachings and example of Jesus, the lives of the Apostles, and the characters of the early Christians, exhibit in varying phases the ideal of self-crucifixion.  The doctrine of the cross, with all that it signifies, is the most powerful force in the spread of Christianity.  The spiritual nature of man needs to be trained and disciplined.  But does this truth lead the Christian to the monastic method?  Was the self-renunciation of Jesus like that of the ascetics, with their ecstasies and self-punishments?  Is God more pleased with the recluse who turns from a needy world to shut himself up to prayer and meditation, than He is with him who cultivates holy emotions and heavenly aspirations, while pursuing some honorable and useful calling?  The answer to these questions discloses the chief fallacy in the monastic ideal, the effect of which was the creation of an artificial piety.  There is no special virtue in silence, celibacy, and abstinence from the enjoyment of God’s gifts to mankind.