Renunciation of the state of wedlock was anyhow imposed on the faithful during the lengthy, often lifelong, terms of penance imposed upon them for sins committed; and later, when monkery took the place, in a church become worldly, partly of the primitive baptism and partly of that rigorous penance which was the rebaptism and medicine of the lapsed, celibacy and virginity were held essential thereto, no less than renunciation of property and money-making.
Monkery is common among them, but there are no nuns.
6 Intercourse with India had given Persian mysticism the form of Buddhistic monkery, while the Arabs imitated the Christian anchorites; thus the two movements had an inner kinship and an outer form so nearly identical that they naturally coalesced, and that even the earliest organizations of orders of dervishes, whether in the East or the West, appeared to Mahommedan judgment to be of one type.
The same hatred of monkery characterized the Thonraki and inspires the Key of Truth.
