It has been charged against these orders, that from the extreme of poverty they became rich. _Hinc illæ lachrymæ._ But how did they so increase? Because toil and labour were their law: they brought wealth out of lands chosen for their sterility, that their rule of toil might be the more continually exercised. Industry had its natural fruits, and spread its influence: they taught as well as practised; and their object, how they disposed of that which they gained, is now well known. The monuments, long unheeded, are before us. That we may not be unjustly thought, in what we have said, to favour Romish institutions, we would make a distinction, too little observed,--we would not confound the retired, the benevolent, the religious lives of those benefactors in the monastic orders, with the political tyrannical Papacy in Rome itself. _There_ was ambition and avarice--a worldliness, at the instigation of the "Prince of this world," working out a system whose necessities begot the vilest superstitions and idolatries for unholy gain, and disseminated corruption instead of life. The history of the Popes is not the history of the devout and laborious of the monastic orders at all times. They were indeed within the pale of the Church of Rome, for there was then no other; but they who cultivated wastes, taught the people, and preserved and invented arts and literature, were far other men. The evil of Papacy had not reached them at once in their wildernesses. When the corrupt system did reach them, it bore its fruit. But even then, and among such, be it remembered, arose those who were still pure, and above the corruptions--and from them originated the Reformation. In reasoning upon past institutions, consideration must be had of the peculiar phase of the world when they arose. The whole altered condition of society would make that a positive evil which was once a positive good. Monastic institutions have done their work;--they cannot be restored, in a healthy state, in a Protestant country, whose constitution, and the laws that both make and support it, and the habits, manners, and feelings of the people, are entirely repugnant to them. Romanism is antagonistic with everything that is not of it. It demands at all times and everywhere to be the dominant power. To give it more than toleration, is to put into its hands that fulcrum which will be incessantly employed to subvert every institution that cannot be resolved into itself. Neither governments nor homes can escape its snares and its tyranny. "Inspectum domos venturaque desuper urbi."