feathered from their own wing. Their principles, like those of modern dissenters, propagated schism; they split amongst themselves; and the four orders tore the coat, which should be without seam, into as many parts. Mutual abuse, instead of cordial co-operation, was their maxim. The poor ploughman who sought instruction in his creed at the hands of the Friars Minors, was only told, as he valued his soul, to beware of the Carmelites; the Carmelites promoted his edification by denouncing the Dominican; the Dominicans in their turn by condemning the Augustins. “Be true to us,” was the language of each; “give us your money, and you shall be saved without a creed.”[83] Indeed, the frailty of human nature soon found out the weak places of the mendicant system. Soon had the primitive zeal of its founders burnt itself out; and then its censer was no longer lighted with fire from the altar:--a living was to be made. The vows of voluntary poverty only led to jesuitical expedients for evading it; a straining at gnats and swallowing of camels. The populace were to be alarmed, or caressed, or cajoled out of a subsistence. A death bed was a friar’s harvest; then were suggested the foundation of chantries, and the provision of masses and wax-lights. The confessional was his exchequer; there hints were dropped that the convent needed a new window, or that it owed “fortie pound for stones.” Was the good man of the house refractory? The friar had the art of leading the women captive, and reaching the family purse by means of the wife.[84] Was the piety of the public to be stimulated? Rival relics were set up, and impostures of all kinds multiplied without shame, to the impoverishment of the people, the disgrace of the church, and the scandal of Christianity.