of uncleanness. It may reasonably be suspected or imagined, when our own vows and oaths are called for to strengthen God's commandments, that there is some stratagem to evade them, and to put some gloss and interpretation upon the duty, that may make it somewhat else than what he hath enjoined: no man can believe that the chastity of a pious and devout mother is less meritorious, of an inferior allay, to that of the daughter miserably betrayed into a monastery to save a portion, and into a vow to keep that which is not in her power to lose, otherwise than by vexatious and repining wishes; and it is worth the enquiry, whether there be not much of the virtue itself lost or diminished, in the restraints, constraints, and inclosure, to which it is made liable. Who ever heard of the temperance of a Capuchin, who is allowed no more to eat than will sustain nature? Multum interest, utrum peccare aliquis nolit, an nesciat. No man ever attained the fame of sobriety, who never had it in his power to drink any thing but water. A man who was never in war, nor saw an army, may as well pretend to the honour of a great general by having read Cæsar's Commentaries and Polybius, as a miserable nun can pretend to the glory of chastity, who knows nothing more of it than by reading the canting language of Mother Teresa,

and the lives of the virgin martyrs; Instrumenta illis explicandæ nequitia desunt. It ceases to be virtue when there is no election; and a man who is tied in a room by a chain, may as reasonably expect to be thought to be delighted with contemplation, as a woman shall be believed to be devoted to chastity, who is shut up from all possible conversation with mankind. Of the sad effects and consequence of these unhappy vows and inclosures, every monastery can give instances enough; and the courts of judicatory, of judgments given on their behalf who have found means to escape from those captivities, and sued for their portions, and the sentences thereupon, are published at large in all their pleadings.

In the last place then, let us consider the third vow, of obedience; which hath so fair an aspect, that it can hardly be suspected to have any evil intention; it prevents confusion, and supports order and government. Where there is no obedience there can be no government. Obedience is such an evangelical virtue and precept, that you shall rarely find it used throughout the scripture in any ill sense;.commands may be unreasonable and unjust, and yet the obedience is requisite. They who are under the obligation of obedience, are excused for doing many ill things; and therefore, a

wife who receives stolen goods from her husband, without any guilt in the theft, shall not be punished, because she ought to obey her husband, and ought not to suspect him, and less to accuse him. But there are commands so notoriously unjust, and unquestionably unlawful, that no person ought to be obedient to them. Let us therefore examine whether this vow doth not intend such a kind of obedience as they wish should be obligatory in those cases; that it should be an obedience. that should controul obedience. They do not pretend that this vow obliges them to the obedience of the laws of the country, or of the magistrate in the country where they live; nay, not to the canons and constitutions of the church; to the which, though they profess obedience, they do not think that they have broke this vow, when they have broken one or more of them. The state then is not the more safe or secure for their having made this vow of obedience; it may be so much the contrary, that it may be undone by the influence of this vow; it is a vow of obedience; to their superiors of that order, of which they are, exclusive to all others, to the rector or superior of the monastery or convent, to the provincial of that province of the same order, to their general, and, as the upper and highest wrung of the ladder, to the pope, where all their obedience is terminated.

So then let the law prescribe what it will, and the king command what he will, their obedience to either is not the subject-matter of this vow; but whatever the one or the other enjoins is controlled by the pope; which enables him to disturb the peace of all kingdoms, as far as the regulars of those kingdoms are able to assist him; and how much that is, the relapses in several kingdoms have too fully declared; and therefore every catholic prince is to value his security upon the friendship of the pope, more than upon the fidelity of his own subjects: whereas all the bishops. and secular clergy have their dependence so entirely and solely upon the crown, that it is not in the power of the pope himself to seduce them from their allegiance; and why they should not be able to discharge all those offices in the church, which were originally committed to them, without the help of those interlopers, may be justly wondered at; and that these vow-makers should be thought so necessary, when every one of their three vows is directly against the wealth, or against the strength or the peace of the kingdom; and is so far from any foundation in policy, that it is in the face of all politic constitutions, and worthy rather of wonder at the folly of those times, which permitted men to be founders at other men's charges, to draw a company of men together to be fed and kept by

those who know them not, to establish laws and rules contrary and destructive to policy, to make vows contrary to nature, and to introduce factions into church and state, by superinducing a sovereign jurisdiction over the conscience of those who are born subjects to another prince; and, lastly, to constitute a new and contradictory clergy, which renounce all obedience to bishops: I say, all this is rather worthy of wonder, than future approbation or connivance, that the church may be reduced within that inclosure in which our Saviour left it, to be directed and instructed by learned and pious bishops, in subjection to and under the government of those Christian kings who were appointed by him to reign over us.

To return then to that kind of contemplative life from whence this excursion led us, and to the virtue and merit whereof these monastics, or some of them, do pretend, as founded and dedicated to contemplation. If the disquisition we have already made concerning them doth exempt us from taking farther consideration of them and their obligations, we will make no stay in considering that olitary kind of life, which hath heretofore been affected by some pious persons, and whose examǝles many of those cloisters would be thought to ollow; forgetting that they had no other cloisters han the wild forest, and trees for their habitation,