of men and women to live at an eternal distance from each other, without the least regard to the given points of contact! How unfriendly to society! This is abusing christianity, and perverting it to the most pernicious purposes; under a pretence of raising piety, by giving more time and leisure for devotion. For it never can be pious either in design or practice, to cancel any moral obligation, or to make void any command of God: and as to prayer, it may go along with every other duty, and be performed in every state. All states have their intermissions; and if it should be otherwise sometimes, I can then, while discharging any duty, or performing any office, pray as well in my heart, O God be merciful to me a sinner, and bless me with the blessing of thy grace and providence, as if I was prostrate before an altar. What Martha was reproved

for, was on account of her being too Yolicitous about the things of this life. Where this is not the case, business and the world are far from being a hindrance to piety. God is as really glorified in the discharge of relative duties, as in the discharge of those which more immediately relate to himself. He is in truth more actively glorified by our discharging well the relative duties, and we thereby may become more extensively useful in the church and in the world, may be more public blessings, than it is possible to be in a single pious state. In short, this one thing, celibacy, (were there nothing else) the making the unmarried state a more holy state than marriage, shews the prodigious nonsense and impiety of the Church of Rome, and is reason enough to flee that communion, if we had no other reasons for protesting against it. The tenet is so superstitious and dangerous, that it may well be esteemed a doctrine of those devils, who are the seducers and destroyers of mankind: but it is (says Wallace*) suitable to the views and designs of a church, which has discovered such an enormous ambition, and made such havock of the human race, in order to raise, establish, and preserve an usurped and tyrannical power.

But as to the Married Regulars I have mentioned; they were very glad to see me, and entertained me with great civility and goodness. I lived a week with them, and was not only well fed with vegetables and puddings on their lean days, Wednesdays and Fridays, and with plain meat, and good malt drink, on the other days; but was greatly delighted with their manner