ABELIANS, OR ABELONIANS.

This sect of heretics rose in Champagne, near Hippon, and had been some time extinct in St. Augustin’s days. They professed very strange principles, and such as were not likely to continue long. They ordained that each man should be in possession of his particular woman; they thought it improper, and would not allow, that a man should continue single; it was necessary, according to the statutes of the order, that he should have a helpmate like unto himself: but it was not permitted him to lean upon this prop, that is, to be corporeally united to his wife: she was to him the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the fruit of which was forbidden him under severe penalties. These people were for regulating matrimony upon the footing of the terrestrial paradise, in which Adam and Eve were united only in their affections; or rather they

followed the example of Abel: for they pretended that Abel was married, but that he died without ever having any knowledge of his wife; and from him the sect borrowed its name. When a man and a woman entered into this society, they adopted two children, a boy and a girl, who succeeded to their goods, and who married together upon the same condition of not getting children, but of adopting two others of different sexes. They easily met with poor people in the neighbourhood to furnish them with children. This account is given us by St Augustin; and as he is almost the only author who mentions them, we must imagine that this sect was known but in a few places, and had but a short continuance. It is believed, that it began in the reign of Arcadius, and ended in that of Theodosius the younger. All those who composed it, being at last reduced to one single village, reunited themselves to the Catholic church.

Such a state of continency between a man and his wife, who had every thing else in common, and whose union was esteemed a true marriage, was too great a violence offered to nature, to be of long continuance. “ Nullum violentum durabile:—Nothing violent is lasting.” The Abelians were only a moderate sort of Encratites and Novatians, who absolutely condemned matrimony, while the Abelians approved of and retained it. It is true, it was barely the name: they preserved its appearance, but denied its power. “ Hi nomen quidem conju-gii et nuptiarum retinuerunt, vim autem et effec-tum earum prorsus sustulerunt.” Had they looked upon marriage to be a sacrament, their opinion in this point would have been like that of the Zuinglians concerning the Eucharist; they would have admitted the figure, but not the reality: and this must have contributed towards extinguishing the sect. You will find in Furetiere’s dictionary, that

Boire, et manger, coucher ensemble,
C’est mariage, ce me semble.

This is the natural idea of that state: and in this description, the last character passes for the principal and the specific distinction. It is that which ties the knot, and renders it indissoluble. It is the end, the mark, and the crown of the work. It is thene plus ultra. It is therefore very improbable, that such numbers of people, even after the notion became common, should choose to submit both to the name and the restraint of matrimony, and to renounce the most shining honours of celibacy, without tasting of the fruits and the joys of marriage. To adopt a child, among them, supplied the intention of getting one; and therefore we cannot apply to the Abelians the remark of Florus on the first inhabitants of Rome: “ Res erat unius ætatis, populus virorum:—It was an establishment calculated to continue but for one race, as consisting entirely of men for, if other causes had not concurred, this sect might have continued to the end of the world. “ Per sæculorum millia (incredibile dictu !) gens æterna est, in qua nemo nascitur:—They are a race of people, which (incredible to relate !) is never extinct, though no one is born among them,” says Pliny of the Essenians; and the observation is every day applied to the monks The observations of Bayle have been fully borne out by the fate of an attempt to form a society upon similiar principles in the United States, which has necessarily failed.—Ed. ¹¹.—Ari.Abelians.