unmarried state, which her writers, her fathers, her Popes, her councils, have sounded from age to age. Not satisfied with placing it at the very summit of the scale of Christian virtue, they contrived the most cruel and insidious of all moral snares, in the perpetual vows with which they secured the profession, not the observance, of the virtue they extolled. Saint Paul lamented that young widows, after devoting themselves to the service of the church, and living at the expense of her members, grew disorderly, and married, incurring blame from the enemies of the Christian name, who scoffed at their fickleness of purpose. Against this evil he provided the most rational remedy— that of receiving no widow to the service of the church, who was not threescore years old. The church of Rome, on the contrary, allures boys and girls of sixteen to bind themselves with perpetual vows the latter are confined in prisons, because their frailties could not be concealed; the former are let loose upon the people, trusting that a su

* The word damnation is, in its present sense, quite inappropriate in this and several other passages.

perstitious reverence will close the eyes, or seal up the lips of men, on their misconduct. "Christian clemency," says Erasmus, "has, for the most part, abolished the servitude of the ancients, leaving but vestiges of it in a few countries. But under the cloak of religion a new kind of slavery has been invented, which now prevails in a multitude of monasteries. Nothing there is lawful but what is commanded: whatever may accrue to the professed becomes the property of the community: if you stir a foot, you are brought back, as if flying after murdering your father and mother. The Council of Trent enjoins all bishops to enforce the close confinement of nuns, by every means, and even to engage the assistance of the secular arm for that purpose; entreats all Princes to protect the inclosure of the convents; and threatens instant excommunication on all civil magistrates who withhold their aid when the bishops call for it. "Let no professed nun (say the fathers of the Council of Trent) come out of her monastery under any pretext whatever; not even for

* See the whole dialogue, Virgo Miroyauss, Note H.

a moment."

"If any of the regulars (men and women under perpetual vows) pretend that fear or force compelled them to enter the cloister, or that the profession took place before the appointed age; let them not be heard, except within five years of their profession. But if they put off the frock, of their own accord, no allegation of such should be heard; but, being compelled to return to the convent, they must be punished as apostates, being, in the mean time, deprived of all the privileges of their order *" Such is the Christian lenity of Rome; such the fences that guard her virginplots; such were the laws confirmed at Trent by the wild uproar of six hundred bishops, of whom but few could have cast the first stone at the adulteress, dismissed to sin no more by the Saviour.

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Accursed, accursed be all heretics," exclaim the legates: "Accursed, accursed!" answer, with one voice, the mitred tyrants †. The blood, indeed, boils in one's veins, and the mouth fills with re

* See the laws on this subject, Note I.

+ See the Acclamations in the last session of the Council of Trent. See also the state of morals among the clergy, according to the avowal of the first legates. Note I.

taliating curses, at the contemplation of that odious scene: yet, I thank God, the feelings of indignation which I cannot wholly suppress, leave me completely free to obey the divine precept respecting those that" curse us, and despitefully use us." That my feelings are painfully vehement when I dwell upon this subject; that neither the freedom I have enjoyed so many years, nor the last repose of the victims, the remembrance of whom still wrings tears from my eyes, can allay the bitter pangs of my youth; are proofs that my views arise from a real, painful, and protracted experience. Of monks and friars I know comparatively little, because the vague suspicions, of which even the most pious Spanish parents cannot divest themselves, prevented my frequenting the interior of monasteries during boyhood. My own judgment, and the general disgust which the prevailing grossness and vulgarity of the regulars, create in those who daily see them; kept me subsequently away from all friendly intercourse with the cowled tribes: but of the secular clergy, and the amiable life-prisoners of the church of Rome, few, if any, can possess a more intimate knowledge than my

K

self. Devoted to the ecclesiastical profession since the age of fifteen, when I received the minor orders, I lived in constant friendship with the most distinguished youths who, in my town, were preparing for the priesthood. Men of the first eminence in the church were the old friends of my family-my parents' and my own spiritual directors. Thus I grew up, thus I continued in manhood, till, at the age of five-and-thirty, religion, and religion alone, tore me away from kindred and country. The intimacy of friendship, the undisguised converse of sacramental confession, opened to me the hearts of many, whose exterior conduct might have deceived a common observer. The coarse frankness of associate dissoluteness, left no secrets among the spiritual slaves, who, unable to separate the laws of God from those of their tyrannical church, trampled both under foot, in riotous despair. Such are the sources of the knowledge I possess: God, sorrow, and remorse, are my witnesses.

A more blameless, ingenuous, religious set of youths than that in the enjoyment of whose friendship I passed the best years of my life, the world