The wrath of Popes, prelates, and inquisitors hath been especially kindled of late years against sundry communities, sects, and residues of sects, which are known by the name of Beghards, Beguines, Lollards, Kathari, Fratricelli, Brethren of the Free Spirit,[72] &c. Councils, they tell me, have been held at Cologne, Mayence, and Narbonne, to suppress the Beghards. Yet their numerous communities in the Netherlands and the Rhineland are a blessing to the poor folk, to whom the hierarchy are a curse. The clergy are jealous of them. They live single, they work with their hands, they nurse the sick, they lay out the dead, they lead a well-ordered and godly life in their Beguinasia, under the Magister or Magistra; but they are bound by no vows, fettered by no harassing minutiæ of austerity, and think the liberty of the Spirit better than monkish servitude. Some of them have fallen into the notions of those enthusiastic Franciscans who think the end of the world at hand, and that we live in, or near, the days of Antichrist. And no wonder, when the spiritual heads of Christendom are so unchristian. There are some sturdy beggars who wander about the country availing themselves of the name of Beghard to lead an idle life. These I excuse not. They say some of these Beghards claim the rank of apostles—that they have subterranean rooms, where both sexes meet to hear blasphemous preachers announce their equality with God. Yea, worse charges than these—even of grossest lewdness—do they bring. I know many of them, both here and at Cologne, but nothing of this sort have I seen, or credibly heard of. They are the enemies of clerical pomp and usurpation, and some, I fear, hold strange fantastical notions, coming I know not whence. But the churchmen themselves are at fault, and answerable for it all. They leave the artisans and labourers in besotted ignorance, and when they do get a solitary religious idea that comes home to them, ten to one but it presently confounds or overthrows what little sense they have. Many deeply religious minds among us, both of laity and clergy, are at heart as indignant at the crimes of the hierarchy as can be the wildest mob-leading fanatic who here and there appears for a moment, haranguing the populace, denouncing the denouncers, and bidding men fight sin with sin. We who sigh for reform, who must have more spiritual freedom, have our secret communications, our meetings now and then for counsel, our signs and counter-signs. Folks call the Rhineland the Parsons’ Walk—so full is it of the clergy, so enjoyed and lorded over by them. Verily, it is at least as full of those hidden ones, who, in various wise which they call heresy, do worship God without man coming in between.