Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

SANCTUARY.
339
purgatory. They had a deep conviction that sin
must be followed by punishment either here or
there. So far from breeding contempt, their
familiarity with the holy mystery of the Incarnation,
which is a peculiar grace of Mass, only
made them realise the more what a terrible thing
it is to fall into the Hands of the Living God.
The privilege of Sanctuary was attached to the
Church in very early times. In his defence of the
wretched Eutropius, St. Chrysostom
"
offers a notable
instance of it. Certain crimes were exempted from
the privilege and yet it was no doubt often misused
by malefactors. During the Wars of the Roses
Sanctuary sheltered the rival queens, Elisabeth
Wootjville and Margaret of Anjou, but those royal
misfortunes were almost the last to profit by an
institution which belonged to the ages of faith.
Under Henry VII. the Holy See restricted Sane-
tuary,1 and under his successor it shared the
fortunes of the Catholic religion itself, and was
proscribed.
The Recluses, or Ankrets, were also called into
being by the lessed Sacrament. From the be-
ginning the impulse after the solitary life has been
very marked. God's grace withdrew men from the
world into places where they could be physically
alone. Hermits and cenobites represent this movement
of the One Spirit. The Recluses, on the
1 Wilkins, Concilia, Bull of Pope Imiocent nil. 1487, to Henry
VII., iii. 621.