Numbers of Confessors however, whether it was that they had forgotten to supply themselves with the passages recommended by St. Charles Borrommee, or that those passages really proved ineffectual in those instants in which they were intended to be useful, have, at different times, formed serious designs upon the chastity of their penitents; and the singular situation in which they were placed, both with respect to the Public, and to their penitents themselves, with whom, changing the grave supercilious Confessor into the wanton lover, was no easy transition, have led them to use expedients of rather singular kinds, to attain their ends. Some, like Robert d’_Arbrissel_, (and the same has been said of Adhelm, an English Saint who lived before the Conquest) have induced young Women to lie with them in the same beds, giving them to understand, that, if they could prove superior to every temptation, and rise from bed as they went to it, it would be in the highest degree meritorious. Others, Menas for instance, a Spanish Monk whose case was quoted in the proceedings against Father Girard, persuaded young Women to live with him in a kind of holy conjugal union, which he described to them, but which did not however end, at last, in that intellectual manner which the Father had promised. Others have persuaded Women that the works of matrimony were no less liable to pay tithes than the fruits of the earth, and have received these tithes accordingly. This scheme was, it is said, contrived by the Fryars of a certain Convent in a small Town in Spain, and La Fontaine has made it the subject of one of his _Tales_, which is entitled _The Cordeliers of Catalonia_, in which he describes with much humour the great punctuality of the Ladies in that Town, in discharging their debts to the Fathers, and the vast business that was, in consequence, carried on in the Convent of the latter. Lastly, other Confessors have had recourse to their power of flagellation, as an excellent expedient for preparing the success of their schemes, and preventing the first suspicions which their penitents might entertain of their views. In order the better to remove the scruples which the modesty of these latter caused them at first to oppose, they used to represent to them, that our first Parents were naked in the garden of Eden; they moreover asked, whether people must not be naked, when they are christened; and shall not they likewise be so, on the day of Resurrection? Nay, others have made such a state of nakedness, on the part of their penitents, a matter of express duty, and have supported this doctrine, as the Author of the _Apologie pour Hérodote_ relates, by quoting the passage of Jesus Christ, in which he says, _Go, and shew thyself to the Priest_.