"And if I pray thus with devotion, adoration, sacrifice, oblation, and praise, have we not here five acts of the virtue of religion added by me to the sixth, which is prayer?" "But," rejoined the other, "the vow is more than all that." "If," replied Blessed Francis, "you say that the act of making a vow is in itself more than all these six together, you must really bring me some proof of its being so." "I mean," said the other, "than each of these acts taken separately," "That," returned our Blessed Father, "is not the opinion of the Angelical Doctor,[4] who, when enumerating the eleven acts of religion, places the making a vow only in the eighth rank, with seven preceding it, namely, prayer, devotion, adoration, sacrifice, oblation, the paying of tithes, and first-fruits; and three after it: the praise of God, the taking of lawful oaths, and the adjuring of creatures in God. "It is not that the act of making a vow is not an excellent thing; but we have no right to set it above other virtues which surpass it in excellence, and other good works of greater worth. We must leave everything in its place, going neither against the order of reason nor against that of divine charity. A man who boasts too much of his noble birth provokes scrutiny into the genuineness of his claim and risks its being disallowed." "All the same," persisted this person, "I maintain that a good work done by vow is more meritorious than one done without it, charity, of course, being taken for granted." "It is not enough," replied Francis, "to take charity for granted. We must also suppose it to be greater in the man who does the action with a vow than in the one who does it without; for if he who says some particular prayer, because bound by vow, has less charity than he who says the same without being so bound, he, doubtless, has, and you will not deny it, less merit than the other, because merit is not in proportion to the vow made, but to the charity which accompanies it, and without which it has neither life nor value." "And supposing equal charity, vow, or no vow," resumed the person, "will not the action done by vow have greater merit than the other?" "It will only have the same eternal glory for its reward," replied our Blessed Father, "in so far as it has the same amount of charity, and thus each will receive the same reward of eternal life. "But as regards accidental glory, supposing that there were a special halo for the vow which would add a fourth to the three of which schoolmen treat, or, if you wish, that there should be as many special and accidental halos of glory as there are kinds of virtue, they will be unequal in accidental glory. "But then we should have to prove that this multiplicity of halos, or accidental glories, exists, in addition to the three of which the schoolmen speak. This I would ask you now to do, though I am doubtful as to the result."