astly I remembered my frail
constitution, now weakened by age, disease and hard work, as a result of
which I should fail to satisfy you and kill myself. For several years
now I have been subject to the stone, a severe and deadly illness, and
for several years I have drunk nothing but wine, and not all kinds of
wine at that, owing to my disease; I cannot endure all kinds of food nor
indeed all climates. The illness is very liable to recur and demands a
very careful regimen; and I know the climate in Holland and your style
of living, not to mention your ways. So, had I come back to you, all I
would have achieved would have been to bring trouble on you and death on
myself.

But perhaps you think it a great part of happiness to die amid one's
fellow-brethren? This belief deceives and imposes not on you alone but
on nearly everyone. We make Christian piety depend on place, dress,
style of living and on certain little rituals. We think a man lost who
changes his white dress for black, or his cowl for a cap, or
occasionally moves from place to place. I should dare to say that
Christian piety has suffered great damage from these so-called religious
practices, although it may be that their first introduction was due to
pious zeal. They then gradually increased and divided into thousands of
distinctions; this was helped by a papal authority which was too lax and
easy-going in many cases. What more defiled or more impious than these
lax rituals? And if you turn to those that are commended, no, to the
most highly commended, apart from some dreary Jewish rituals, I know not
what image of Christ one finds in them. It is these on which they preen
themselves, these by which they judge and condemn others. How much more
in conformity with the spirit of Christ to consider the whole Christian
world one home and as it were one monastery, to regard all men as one's
fellow-monks and fellow-brethren, to hold the sacrament of Baptism as
the supreme rite, and not to consider where one lives but how well one
lives! You want me to settle on a permanent abode, a course which my
very age also suggests. But the travellings of Solon, Pythagoras and
Plato are praised; and the Apostles, too, were wanderers, in particular
Paul. St. Jerome also was a monk now in Rome, now in Syria, now in
Antioch, now here, now there, and even in his old age pursued literary
studies.

But I am not to be compared with St. Jerome--I agree; yet I have never
moved unless fo