I have searched through every degree and station of men, and confess, that I have found no where more austerity of manners, or greater contempt of earthly pleasures, than in some religious houses, where people freely resigning and retiring from the world to combat themselves, have no other business but subdue their appetites. What can be a greater evidence of perfect chastity, and a superlative love, to immaculate purity in men and women, than that in the prime of their age, when lust is most raging, they should actually seclude themselves from each others company, and by a voluntary renunciation debar themselves for life, not only from uncleanness, but even the most lawful embraces? those that abstain from flesh, and often all manner of food, one would think in the right way, to conquer all carnal desires; and I could almost swear, that he does not consult his ease, who daily mauls his bare back and shoulders with unconscionable stripes, and constantly roused at night from his sleep, leaves his bed for his devotion. Who can despise riches more, or show himself less avaricious than he, who will not so much as touch gold or silver, no not with his feet? Or can any mortal show himself less luxurious or more humble than the man, that making poverty his choice, contents himself with scraps and fragments, and refuses to eat any bread but what is bestowed upon him by the charity of others. Such fair instances of self-denial, would make me bow down to virtue, if I was not deterred and warned from it by so many persons of eminence and learning, who unanimously tell me that I am mistaken, and all I have seen is farce and hypocrisy; that what seraphic love they may pretend to, there is nothing but discord among them; and that how penitential the nuns and friars may appear in their several convents, they none of them sacrifice their darling lusts: that among the women, they are not all virgins that pass for such, and that if I was to be let into their secrets, and examine some of their subterraneous privacies, I should soon be convinced by scenes of horror, that some of them must have been mothers. That among the men I should find calumny, envy, and ill nature, in the highest degree, or else gluttony, drunkenness, and impurities of a more execrable kind than adultery itself: and as for the mendicant orders, that they fer in nothing but their habits from other sturdy beggars, who deceive people with a pitiful tone, and an outward show of misery, and as soon as they are out of sight, lay by their cant, indulge their appetites, and enjoy one another.