In a very few centuries after Christianity became national in most parts of Europe, although the church of Rome had already introduced many corruptions in religion; yet the piety of early Christians, as well as new converts, was so great, and particularly of princes, as well as noblemen and other wealthy persons, that they built many religious houses, for those who were inclined to live in a recluse or solitary manner, endowing those monasteries with land. It is true, we read of monks some ages before, who dwelt in caves and cells, in desert places. But, when public edifices were erected and endowed, they began gradually to degenerate into idleness, ignorance, avarice, ambition, and luxury, after the usual fate of all human institutions. The Popes, who had already aggrandized themselves, laid hold of the opportunity to subject all religious houses with their priors and abbots, to their peculiar authority; whereby these religious orders became of an interest directly different from the rest of mankind, and wholly at the Pope's devotion. I need say no more on this article, so generally known and so frequently treated, or of the frequent endeavours of some other princes, as well as our own, to check the growth, and wealth, and power of the regulars. In later times, this mistaken piety, of erecting and endowing abbeys, began to decrease. And therefore, when some new-invented sect of monks and friars began to start up, not being able to procure grants of land, they got leave from the Pope to appropriate the tithes and glebes of certain parishes, as contiguous or near as they could find, obliging themselves to send out some of their body to take care of the people's souls: And, if some of those parishes were at too great a distance from the abbey, the monks appointed to attend them were paid, for the cure, either a small stipend of a determined sum, or sometimes a third part, or what are now called the vicarial tithes. As to the church-lands, it hath been the opinion of many writers, that, in England, they amounted to a third part of the whole kingdom. And therefore, if that wicked prince above-mentioned, when he had cast off the Pope's power, had introduced some reformation in religion, he could not have been blamed for taking away the abbey-lands by authority of parliament. But, when he continued the most cruel persecutor of all those who differed in the least article of the Popish religion, which was then the national and established faith, his seizing on those lands, and applying them to profane uses, was absolute sacrilege, in the strongest sense of the word; having been bequeathed by princes and pious men to sacred uses.