There is a curious passage in the Bibliotheca Orientalis of Assemanus, in which the deserts are supposed to have been originally intended for the use of these saints, compensating for their sterility by the abundant crop of virtues which they were to produce! _In illâ vero soli vastitate, quæ procul a Nili ripis quaquaversus latissime protenditur, non urbes, non domicilia, non agri, non arbores, sed desertum, arena, feræ; non tamen hanc terræ partem (ut Eucherii verbis utar) inutilem et inhonoratam dimisit Deus, quum in primordiis rerum omnia in sapientiâ faceret, et singula quæque futuris usibus apta distingueret; sed cuncta non magis præsentis magnificentiâ, quam futuri præscientiâ creans, venturis, ut arbitror, Sanctis Eremum paravit. Credo, his illam locupletem fructibus voluit, et pro indulgentioris naturæ vice, hanc Sanctorum dare fœcundiam, ut sic pinguescerent fines deserti: Et quum irrigaret de superioribus suis montes, abundaret quoque multiplicata fruge convalles locorumque damna supplicet, quum habitationem sterilem habitatore ditaret._ “If the ways of religion,” says South, “are ways of pleasantness, such as are not ways of pleasantness, are not truly and properly ways of religion. Upon which ground it is easy to see what judgement is to be passed upon all those affected, uncommanded, absurd austerities, so much prized and exercised by some of the Romish profession. Pilgrimages, going barefoot, hair-shirts and whips, with other such gospel-artillery, are their only helps to devotion; things never enjoined, either by the prophets under the Jewish, or by the apostles under the Christian economy, who yet surely understood the proper and the most efficacious instruments of piety, as well as any confessor or friar of all the order of St. Francis, or any casuist whatsoever. “It seems that with them a man sometimes cannot be a penitent unless he also turns vagabond, and foots it to Jerusalem, or wanders over this or that part of the world to visit the shrines of such or such a pretended saint, though perhaps in his life ten times more ridiculous than themselves. Thus, that which was Cain’s error, is become their religion. He that thinks to expiate a sin by going barefoot, only makes one folly the atonement for another. Paul, indeed, was scourged and beaten by the Jews, but we never read that he beat or scourged himself; and if they think that his _keeping under of his body_ imports so much, they must first prove that the body cannot be kept under by a virtuous mind, and that the mind cannot be made virtuous but by a scourge, and consequently that thongs and whip-cord are means of grace, and things necessary to salvation. The truth is, if men’s religion lies no deeper than their skin, it is possible that they may scourge themselves into very great improvements.