tion, wisdom, and experience. They who observe and consider, as there is subject-matter enough in the world for such observation and consideration, how very few men there are, how liberally soever educated, who are ever by themselves, or know how to think, may reasonably wonder how those stupid illiterate men, who pretend to dedicate themselves, but are sacrificed by the avarice of their friends, to that which they call a contemplative life, can spend their miserable lives; howmen who cannot think, and have known nothing of the world, can contemplate upon the vanity and iniquity of it; or how men who have never been instructed in the attributes of God, or the mysteries and injunctions of religion, can contemplate the joys of heaven, and the lives of saints and angels. Neither virtue nor piety come by nature or chance, but are learned and taught and studied; and contemplation is an art, and the child and faculty of knowledge. The old race of hermits, if there was ever any such, is long since expired: St Jerome, whom they make their Christian pattern, after much experience of the softnesses and excesses of the world, staid not long in that melancholy retirement; but, after some good and pious reflections and resolutions, returned again into the world, and mingled with the greatest contentions in it; and St Austin in a short time left the solitude he affected, knowing well

that he could do much more good in the cities and company of men, than in the woods and desarts. Monkery, that was founded in solitude and silence, all possible care taken by its founder, that it should not be entangled in any offices of religion, but be wholly vacant to cogitations, which they can very improperly be called contemplation when they are rude and unpolished, was quickly weary of its institution; and its disciples made haste to get themselves absolved from the rigour of their rule, and to be manumitted, and infranchised into the business of the world, to be priests and preachers and confessors; and, over and above the enjoyment of their own ample endowments, to be admitted to all the honours and pomp the charge is capable of; insomuch that for near a hundred years together Rome had no bishop, but a monk of the order of St Bennet, who had done all he could that none of his children should receive any spiritual orders, or be conversant in courts; and solitude grew to be so much abominated, that there was a particular act made in a council at Clermont, in the year one thousand ninety-five, by which it was ordained that a monk who was possessed of a benefice should be obliged to have a companion for conversation, lest he should become brutish by being conversant only with rustics; so little reverence was then entertained for that contemplation which they now magnify themselves upon.

It is a difficult thing here to contain myself from reproaching and inveighing against those orders of religious men and women, who are, under pretence of conscience and piety, deprived of that liberty which nature requires, and the law of God allows; the one by vows almost impossible to be kept, and affected and inconvenient habits, which makes them ridiculous to all men at first sight, and exposes the health of body and mind to apparent danger; and the other to unreasonable vows and strict inclosure from the rest of the world: at least, I cannot but enquire by what warrant or permission from God Almighty, by what countenance, testimony of example, from the primitive times of Christianity, and the practice of persons of confessed piety and wisdom, such an institution, hardly consistent with either, and so opposite to the benefit and policy of all Christian kingdoms and states, hath found credit or commendation, or toleration, in all countries where the Roman religion is received; or rather how it supports itself (as it is now exercised) even against the ecclesiastical and civil and municipal laws of those nations, and against the power and jurisdiction and right of all the bishops and catholic clergy of those countries. For as the laws of the church originally restrained all persons from entering into such vows, without the full consent and approbation of parents, and

before they were of an age much greater than is now required, and for failing in either of these points, declared their vows to be void; so they were always under the goverɛment and jurisdic tion of the bishops. An abbey and a monastery was in the same degree of subjection to the bishop, as any other parish or church in his diocese was; and the exemption of them from the discipline by the pope's authority, is such an incroachment upon the laws of all countries, and upon the dignity and prerogative of princes, that it shakes the foundation of all government in all catholic states, and is evidence of the insatiable ambition that is inseparable from the bishop of Rome, to insinuate under the notion of spiritual power, and to possess himself of the temporal authority. For what can be more temporal, than the power which the pope assumes over all monasteries and religious houses; and which makes all those inhabitants, which 'are a vast number of people, more his subjects than the king's; and which in some fatal conjuncture may probably prove the ruin of the greatest monarchy? Since it is notorious enough, that in all catholic rebellions those fraternities are disposed by the pope, though against the king; of which there needs no other instance, than that never-to-be-forgotten league in France, supported by three successive popes against a catholic king, in the end assassi

nated by the impious hand of a friar. After which there can be nothing more stupendous, than that princes who do allow some spiritual jurisdiction to reside in the pope, do not cause it to be defined, at least by the body of their own clergy, what that spiritual jurisdiction doth signify, and how it must extend; and they would then see how far those religious fraternities would submit and conform to those definitions. When I say, that those foundations, under the rules they now profess, have no warrant from scripture, nor from the example or practice of antiquity, I am not ignorant that there were many pious and devout men who did, upon several occasions, and in several seasons, separate and retire themselves from the splendour and noise of the world to a quiet and peaceable solitude: and this was most practised in the infancy of Christianity and in pagan regions; and had no more resemblance to the rules and constitutions of these men, than St Bruno had to the prophet Eliah. But since the argument we are upon, of a solitary and contemplative life, to which all these societies, more or less, pretend to be instituted for, doth naturally enough lead us to take a view of this affected condition of living, let us with some liberty consider the rules they are to observe, and the vows they make, (which is the soul of their religion) and we shall the better be able to examine and make some