The first difficulty he had to master was the received axiom that _the religious state is more perfect than the secular_. He could not see how a vow, which apparently takes away a man's liberty, could increase the merit of actions done under it. As the vow of obedience is the principal one in religion, so much so that in some orders subjects are professed by promising obedience according to the rule, its explanation would remove the difficulty. Two things principally constitute the superiority of _vowed actions_. One, that they must be of a better good; the second, that the will is confirmed in the doing of them. A vow must be of a good better than another good--such as celibacy better than marriage, poverty better than riches, obedience to proper authority better than absolute liberty. The state of religion which takes these three walks of life as essential to its constitution is insomuch better than any other state. But the question comes, why not observe poverty, chastity, and obedience, without vowing them? "Would it not be better that {213} the practice of these virtues should be spontaneous, than that a person should put himself under the moral necessity of not deviating from it? No; because it is a weak will which reserves to itself the right of refusing to persevere in a sacrifice. If a man intends to observe chastity, but reserves to himself the right to marry whenever he pleases, he signifies by his state of mind that he may some day repent of his choice, and makes provision for that defalcation. That is a want of generosity, it is a safety valve by which trusting to God's grace escapes, and perfection can never be attained while one has the least notion of the possibility of doing less for God than he does. "He that puts his hand to the plough and turns back is not worthy." By a vow, a person not only resolves to do for the present what is perfect, but to continue doing it for life, and as the person knows right well that his natural strength will not carry him through, he trusts the issue to God's goodness. This fixing of the will, and narrowing, as far as possible, the range of our liberty, is an assimilation of the present state to the state of the blessed. They do the will of God and cannot help doing it, they have no liberty of sinning, and the vow of obedience by which a man binds himself to do God's will, manifested to him through his superiors or his rule, takes away from him the least rational inclination for liberty to sin. Not only that, but he makes it a sin to recede from God one step, and he sacrifices to his Creator a portion of the liberty that is granted to us all. It is a sin for a man who has a vow of chastity to marry, though naturally he was perfectly free to do so. He sacrificed that freedom to God, and lest he might be inclined to backslide at any future day he put the barrier of this moral obligation behind him. The person under vow is God's