[4] The word _Discipline_ originally signified in general, the censures and corrections which persons who were guilty of Sins, received from their Superiors; and when _Flagellation_ was to be part of those corrections, it was expressly mentioned; and they called such Discipline, as the Reader will see in the Sequel of this Book, “the discipline of the whip,” (_disciplina flagelli_). As Flagellation grew afterwards to be the common method of doing penance that prevailed among persons in religious Orders, the bare word _discipline_ became in course of time the technical word to express that kind of chastisement: thus, the Reader will find hereafter an instance in which Flagellation, when too long continued, is called “the madness of too long discipline,” (_longioris disciplinæ insania_). And at last, those kinds of whips made of knotted and twisted cords, commonly used for the above pious exercises, have also been called by the same name; and the word _discipline_ has become in French, for instance, the appropriated word to express the instrument of religious flagellation. Thus, in Molière’s Play, called the _Tartuffe_, or the Hypocrite, Tartuffe tells his Man, “Laurent, lock up my hair-cloth, and discipline, and pray that Heaven may always illuminate you.” Laurent, serrez ma haire avec ma discipline, Et priez que toujours le Ciel vous illumine. TART. A. III. Sc. 2. [5] _Sursùm & deorsùm disciplina._----All the Women (as the Writer of this Commentary has been told, when in Catholic Countries) who make self-flagellation part of their religious exercises, whether they live in or out of Convents, use the _lower discipline_, as defined above: their pious and merciful Confessors having suggested to them, that the _upper discipline_ may prove dangerous, and be the cause of hurting their breasts, especially when they mean to proceed in that holy exercise with unusual fervour and severity. A few Orders of Friars, among whom are the Capuchins, also use the lower kind of discipline; but for what reason the Commentator has not been as yet informed.