place, to correct, because some good people (I see) are apt to fall into it. There is a complaint amongst us of want of cells and cloisters, in which the exercises of mortification might be (as they think) more advantageously performed. But as we do not enviously lessen the true privileges of other places, or scornfully forbear to wish among ourselves any good which is in others; so we really believe it is much better to be without snch religious houses, than to have them so constituted and governed as they generally are in other countries, and as they sometime were amongst ourselves, where they have too much served either to feed sloth, or to heat melancholy by mystical arts of musing into distraction; in which things, human nature, as it is in imperfect man, needs no assistances.

Blessed be God, we have at this day, in this judicious and pious Church, very great conveniencies for the promoting of a holy and mortified, and, if need be, a very retired life. The members of it may be recluses in both senses of the word, which signifies, truly, persons at

liberty, and, abusively, persons shut up. For there is not (that I know of) any city, or scarce a great town, where there are not religious guides of good ability, public prayers morning and evening, frequent sacraments, pious furniture for the closet, together with good numbers of persons devoutly disposed: and especially in and by London these happy conveniences are abundantly afforded, and (I thank God) by very many, heartily embraced. Now if any are inclined to live more privately, and (the state of the world, and the affairs of their families, well allowing it) to dedicate a great part of their time to heavenly contemplation, and to the more immediate worship of God; they may serve the holy purposes of devotion, by retired lodgings in such cities, and nigh such Churches, generally much better (in my opinion) than by taking a habit, and making a vow, and committing themselves, as it were, to a religious prison.

They may be as devout, and as abstemious. as they please: they may choose their conversation, which is not such if it be not agreeable.

They may go into the world as often as they see they can be useful to it; and they may shut it out when they judge its company to be inconvenient; and as soon as their love of solitude is known, and the loose and impertinent find their discourse not relished, and their visits not returned, they will not uncivilly obtrude upon them. All this the pious amongst us may do upon choice; which is the true salt of every sacrifice we offer to God. They may do it without confinement to one air, and one place, to a society, in which generally there is a faction which makes it uneasy to persons of quiet tempers, to the temptation of coveting forbidden liberty, to offices which, in their nature, are superstitious, and, by their length and perpetual repetition, tedious and burthensome.

They may retire without being loosed from the bonds of their duty to their natural parents, which that great pretender to mortification, the abbé de la Trappe will have to be can

2 Des devoirs de la vie Monastique, Tom. 2. Chap. 16. Quest. 12, 13, p. 55, Ed. 2. p. 57,-" Si les enfans en se retirant

celled by the new monastic alliance, and, as they call it, the moral death and burial of the religious in a cloister. They may be orderly without confinement to such rules as are either absurd, unprofitable, or unfit for their temper, strength, or present circumstance. For example sake, they need not be stinted, in the three hot months, to just so many draughts without the especial licence of the superior; they need not be obliged to have all their sallads dressed with cheese and oil; they need not be forbidden to sleep in any afternoon which comes not betwixt the Ides of May and September; or be enjoined, as soon as they are risen from their tables, to betake themselves to their prayers: which rules, with many others, where discretion has had a less share in the forming of them than imagination, we find in a body of them collected by Menardus. And yet you are not to esteem of such

-ont perdu les parens qu'ils y avoint selon la chair; la Religion leur en a rendu d'autres selon l' Esprit."

3 Menard. Conc. Reg. p. 713, 715, 815.

rules1 as human inventions, but as laws written by the very finger of God, and received (as they say the rule of St. Pacomius was) by the ministry of an Angel. And you are to believe the Superior is the Vicar of Christ.5

6

Doubtless a mixed life is the most profitable for the state of the world; and St. Austin himself esteemed it to be so; and Monsieur Godeau, though a Bishop of the Roman Church, agrees with him in that opinion. So that the words of David, "Thou hast broken my bonds in sunder" which (they say) determined the thoughts of the Count de Bouchage to a monastic retreat, should (one would think) both by the sound, and by the moral sense of them, have rather released him from the narrow limits of his pensive inclination.

But I forget that I am not to make this entrance too large; and I ought not any longer to detain the reader from the book itself. I will

4 Des devoirs, Tom. 1. Chap. 2. Q. 3. p. 6.—“ Comme les loix ecrites du doigt de Dieu."

5 Ib. p. 147.

6 La vie de S. A. p. 560, 561. 7 L' Hist. du Card. de Joyeuse, p. 19,