XLI. O how many antipodes in morality to Sir Thomas More are to be found in every state! for both in the east and the west, you will meet with many of those ridiculous scarecrows, who lead a kind of hermetic life, and are called sanctified or holy men; but those of this day do not mortify themselves so much, but offend other people more, than those of former times were used to do. With a displeasing gravity, and forbidding look that amounts to sour sternness; a conversation so opposite to the cheerful, that it borders on the extreme of clownish surliness; a zeal so harsh and severe, that it degenerates into cruelty; a scrupulous observance of rites and ceremonies, that approaches to superstition; and by the mere want or absence of a few vices; I say, that with the help of these appearances, they, without more cost or trouble, set themselves up as patterns or images of ultimate perfection; and they are truly images in the strict sense of the word, for their whole value consists in their external shape and figure; and I besides call them images, because they are not endued or informed with a true, but with the sham semblance of a spirit. I repeat again that they are images, because they are hard as marble, and insensible and unfeeling as the trunks of trees. In the morality that directs them, gentleness of manners, affability, and pity, are blotted out of the catalogue of virtues. I have not even yet said enough. Those two sensible characteristics of charity, pointed out by St. Paul, that is to say, patience and benevolence, are so foreign to their dispositions, that they are inclined to consider them as signs of relaxation of discipline, or at least of lukewarmness. They assume the figure of saints, without possessing more sanctity than the stock or stone images of such, and would number themselves among the blessed, wanting the requisites which the gospel expresses to constitute them such, and make them deserving of being inserted in that catalogue, which are meekness, compassion, and a conciliatory spirit. _Beati mites, beati misericordes, beati pacifici._