and women to live at an eternal diftance from each other, without the least regard to the given points of contact! How unfriendly to fociety! This is abufing Christianity, and perverting it to the most pernicious purposes; under a pretence of raifing piety, by giving more time and leifure for devotion. For it never can be pious, either in defign or practice, to cancel any moral obligation, or to make void any command of God: and as to prayer, it may go along with every other duty, and be performed in every state. All states have their intermiffions; and if it fhould be otherwise sometimes, I can then, while discharging any duty, or performing any office, pray as well in my heart, O God be: merciful to me a finner, and bless me with the bleffing of thy grace and providence, as if I was proftrate before an altar. What Martha was reproved for, was on account of her being too folicitous about the things of this life. Where this is not the cafe, business and the world are far from being a hindrance to piety. God is as really glorified in the difcharge of relative duties, as in the difcharge of those which more immediately relate to himself. He is in truth more actively glorified by our difcharging well the relative duties, and we thereby may become more extenfively useful in

the

the church and in the world, may be more public bleffings, than it is poffible to be in a fingle pious ftate. In fhort, this one thing, celibacy, (were there nothing elfe) the making the unmarried ftate a more holy ftate than marriage, fhews the prodigious nonfenfe and impiety of the Church of Rome, and is reafon enough to flee that communion, if we had no other reafons for protesting against it. The tenet is fo fuperftitious and dangerous, that it may well be esteemed a doctrine of those devils, who are the feducers and destroyers' of mankind: but it is (fays Wallace *) fuitable to the views and designs of a church, which has difcovered fuch an enormous ambition, and made fuch havock

*Differtation

on the numbers of man kind.

of the human race, in order to raise, establish, and preserve an ufurped and tyrannical power.

$. 4. But as to the Married Regulars I have mentioned, they were very glad to fee me, and entertained me with great civility and goodnefs. I lived a week with them, and was not only well fed with vegetables and pud

A further ac·

count of the Married Re

gulars I met with among the fells of Weltmoreland.

dings on their lean days, Wednesdays and

Fridays,

Fridays, and with plain meat, and good malt drink, on the other days; but was greatly delighted with their manner` and piety, their fenfe and knowledge. I will give my pious readers a fample of their prayers, as I imagine it may be to edification. Thefe friars officiate in their turns, changing every day; and the morning and evening prayers of one of them were in the words following. I took them off in my fhort-hand.

A Prayer for Morning.

LMIGHTY and everlafting God,

A the creator and preferver of all

things, our law-giver, faviour, and judge; we adore thee the author of our beings, and the father of our fpirits. We present ourselves, our acknowledgments, and our homage, at the foot of thy throne, and yield thee the thanks of the moft grateful hearts for all the inftances of thy favour which we have experienced. We thank thee for ever, O Lord God Almighty, for all thy mercies and bleffings vouchfafed ús; for defending us the past night from. evil, and for that kind provifion which thou haft made for our comfortable fubfiftence in this world..

But

But above all, moft glorious Eternal, adored be thy goodness, for repeating and reinforcing the laws and the religion of thy creation, by fupernatural revelation, and for giving us that reafon of mind, which unites us to thee, and makes us implore thy communications of righteousness, to create us again unto good works in Chrift Jefus.

We confefs, O Lord, that we have done violence to our principles, and alienated ourselves from the natural ufe we were fit ted for: we have revolted from thee into a ftate of fin, and by the operation of sense and paffion, have been moved to fuch practices as are exorbitant and irregular: but we are heartily forry for all our mifdoings to thee in Chrift we now make our addrefs, and befeech thee to inform our understandings, and refine our fpirits, that we may reform our lives by repentance, redeem our time by righteousness, and live as the glorious gofpel of thy Son' requires. Let the divine fpirit affift and enable us to over-rule, conduct, and employ, the fubordinate and inferior powers, in the exercife of virtue, and the fervice of our creator, and as far as the imperfec tions of our present state will admit, help us fo to live by the meafures and laws of

heaven,

heaven, that we may have the humility and meeknefs, the mortification and felfdenial of the holy Jefus, his love of thee, his defire of doing thy will, and seeking only thy honour. Let us not come covered before thee under a form of godliness, a cloke of creeds, obfervances and inftitutions of religion; but with that inward faluation and vital fanctity, which renounces the fpirit, wifdom, and honours of this world, dethrones felf-love and pride, subdues fenfuality and covetoufnefs, and opens a kingdom of heaven within by the fpirit of God. O let thy Chrift be our Saviour in this world; and before we die, make us fit to live for ever with thee in the regions of purity and perfection.

Since it is the peculiar privilege of our nature, through thy mercy and goodness, that we are made for an eternal entertainment in those glorious manfions, where the bleffed fociety of faints and angels fhall keep an everlasting fabbath, and a dore and glorify thee for ever, let thy infpiring spirit raife our apprehenfions and defires above all things that are here below, and alienate our minds from the customs and principles of this mad, degenerate, and apoftate world: mind us of the shortness and uncertainty of time, of the boundlefs du

ration,