rce any appetite toward a tasting the joys of
heaven, till they are surfeited, glutted with, and can no longer relish
their enjoyments on earth. By this easy way of purchasing pardons, any
notorious highwayman, any plundering soldier, or any bribe-taking judge,
shall disburse some part of their unjust gains, and so think all their
grossest impieties sufficiently atoned for; so many perjuries, lusts,
drunkenness, quarrels, bloodsheds, cheats, treacheries, and all sorts of
debaucheries, shall all be, as it were, struck a bargain for, and such a
contract made, as if they had paid off all arrears, and might now begin
upon a new score.

[Illustration: Devil Teaching St. Bernard 190]

And what can be more ridiculous, than for some others to be confident of
going to heaven by repeating daily those seven verses out of the Psalms,
which the devil taught St. Bernard, thinking thereby to have put a trick
upon him, but that he was over-reached in his cunning.

Several of these fooleries, which are so gross and absurd, as I myself
am even ashamed to own, are practised and admired, not only by the
vulgar, but by such proficients in religion as one might well expect
should have more wit.

From the same principles of folly proceeds the custom of each country's
challenging their particular guardian-saint; nay, each saint has his
distinct office allotted to him, and is accordingly addressed to upon
the respective occasions: as one for the tooth-ache, a second to grant
an easy delivery in child-birth, a third to help persons to lost
goods, another to protect seamen in a long voyage, a fifth to guard the
farmer's cows and sheep, and so on; for to rehearse all instances would
be extremely tedious.

There are some more catholic saints petitioned to upon all occasions, as
more especially the Virgin Mary, whose blind devotees think it manners
now to place the mother before the Son.

And of all the prayers and intercessions that are made to these
respective saints the substance of them is no more than downright Folly.
Among all the trophies that for tokens of gratitude are hung upon the
walls and ceilings of churches, you shall find no relics presented as
a memorandum of any that were ever cured of Folly, or had been made one
dram the wiser. One perhaps after shipwreck got safe to shore; another
recovered when he had been run through by an enemy; one, when all his
fellow-soldiers were killed upon the spot, as cunningly perhaps as
cowardl