[112] _Miscellanies_, 1796, p. 365. From the same essay I take the following: "Even the ceremonies of religion, both in ancient and in modern times, have exhibited the grossest indecencies. Priests in all ages have been the successful panders of the human heart, and have introduced in the solemn worship of the divinity, incitements, gratifications, and representations, which the pen of the historian must refuse to describe. Often has the sensible Catholic blushed amidst his devotions, and I have seen chapels surrounded by pictures of lascivious attitudes, and the obsolete amours of saints revived by the pencil of some Aretine.... Their homilies were manuals of love, and the more religious they became, the more depraved were their imaginations. In the nunnery the love of Jesus was the most abandoned of passions, and the ideal espousal was indulged at the cost of the feeble heart of many a solitary beauty" (pp. 369-70). [113] From a collection published by the Early English Text Society, 1868, pp. 182-4, 268. [114] G. A. Coe, _The Spiritual Life_, p. 210. [115] _Les Perles de Saint François de Sales_, 1871. Cited by Bloch, p. 111. [116] Davenport's _Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals_, p. 29. [117] See, for example, _Conduct and its Disorders_, by Dr. C. Mercier; _Psycho-Pathological Researches_, by Dr. Boris Sidis; and _Abnormal Psychology_, by I. H. Coriat. [118] _Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases_, p. 584. [119] _Sanity and Insanity_, chap. viii. [120] _The Soul of a Christian_, p. 178. CHAPTER SIX THE STREAM OF TENDENCY