however, from the history of her life, that she was from her childhood excessively fond of reciting an _ave_ or _paternoster_; and while occupied in tending the flocks, her original employment, amused herself in telling her rosary; “by which means,” says the Ursuline sister, “she made, even in her pastoral state of simplicity and ignorance, such great advances in divine love that, the first moment she was allowed to pay her adoration to the crucifix the fervency of her pious passion burst forth with such ecstacy, that she eagerly snatched the holy object to her arms, and embraced it with a transport so warmly affectionate, that streams of tenderness rushed from her eyes.” It is truly said by a celebrated English writer, to be “of the utmost importance to guard against extremes of every kind in religion. We must beware lest by seeking to avoid one rock we split upon another. It has been long the subject of remark, that superstition and enthusiasm are two capital sources of delusion: superstition, on the one hand, attaching men with immoderate zeal to the ritual and external points of religion; and enthusiasm, on the other, directing their whole attention to internal emotions and mystical communications with the spiritual world; while neither the one nor the other had paid sufficient regard to the great moral duties of the Christian life. But running with intemperate eagerness from these two great abuses of religion, men have neglected to observe that there are extremes opposite to each of them, into which they are in hazard of precipitating themselves. Thus the horror of superstition has sometimes reached so far as to produce contempt for all external institutions; as if it were possible for religion to subsist in the world without forms of worship, or public acknowledgment of God. It has also happened, that some, who, in the main are well affected to the cause of goodness, observing that persons of a devout turn have at times been carried away by warm affections into unjustifiable excesses, have thence hastily concluded that all devotion was akin to enthusiasm; and separating religion totally from the heart and affections, have reduced it to a frigid observance of what they call the rules of virtue.” These extremes are to be carefully avoided. True devotion is rational and well founded; and consists in the lively exercise of that affection which we owe to the Supreme Being, comprehending several emotions of the heart, which all terminate in the same great object.