The general esteem for flagellations, which had led people to consider them as an infallible method of atoning for past sins, also induced them to think they would be extremely useful to strengthen those admonitions with which it is the duty of good Christians to assist each other. Hence we find that Saints, who, like other persons, have been pretty free with their advices to other men, have frequently assumed a power to corroborate them by flagellations. Among those instances of corrections bestowed by Saints upon persons who did not ask them for their advice, none can be quoted more remarkable than that of St. Romuald, who, on a certain occasion, severely flagellated his very Father, whose conduct he disapproved, as Cardinal Damian relates, who, we may observe, greatly approves the action of the Saint. The following is the account given by the Cardinal. ‘After he had received permission for that purpose from his Superiors, he set out upon his intended journey, without either horse or cart, but only with a stick in his hand, and with his feet bare; and, from the remotest borders of France, at last reached Ravenna. There finding his Father determined to return to the World, he put him in the stocks; he tied him with heavy chains, dealt hard blows to him, and continued using him with this pious severity, till, by the favour of God, he had brought his soul back to a state of salvation[99].’ To those flagellations bestowed by Saints upon persons who did not ask for them, we may safely add those with which they have, at different times, served such Ladies, as, smitten with their charms (with the Saints charms, I mean) have ventured to make them proposals totally inconsistent with their virtue. These proposals the Saints not only constantly rejected magnanimously, but moreover seldom dismissed the Ladies who attempted them, without making them feel the points of their disciplines. This was the manner in which St. Edmund, who was afterwards Bishop of Canterbury, behaved on an occasion like those we mention, as the learned Claude Despence, a Parisian Theologian, relates in his Book on _Continence_. St. Edmund, the above Writer says, during the time he was pursuing his studies in Paris, was solicited by a young Woman to commit with her the sin of fornication; he thereupon bade her come to his study, where, after tearing off her clothes, he flagellated her naked, so severely, that he covered her whole body with stripes[100].