I grant, sometimes a Piece of Piety to contemn Father or
Mother for the Sake of Christ; but for all that, he would not act
piously, that being a Christian, and had a Pagan to his Father, who had
nothing but his Son's Charity to support him, should forsake him, and
leave him to starve. If you had not to this Day profess'd Christ by
Baptism, and your Parents should forbid you to be baptis'd, you would
indeed then do piously to prefer Christ before your impious Parents; or
if your Parents should offer to force you to do some impious, scandalous
Thing, their Authority in that Case were to be contemned. But what is
this to the Case of a Nunnery? You have Christ at home. You have the
Dictates of Nature, the Approbation of Heaven, the Exhortation of St.
_Paul_, and the Obligation of human Laws, for your Obedience to Parents;
and will you now withdraw yourself from under the Authority of good and
natural Parents, to give yourself up a Slave to a fictitious Father,
rather than to your real Father, and a strange Mother instead of your
true Mother, and to severe Masters and Mistresses rather than Parents?
For you are so under your Parents Direction, that they would have you be
at Liberty wholly. And therefore Sons and Daughters are call'd
[_liberi_] Children, because they are free from the Condition of
Servants. You are now of a free Woman about to make yourself voluntarily
a Slave. The Clemency of the Christian Religion has in a great Measure
cast out of the World the old Bondage, saving only some obscure
Foot-Steps in some few Places. But there is now a Days found out under
pretence of Religion a new Sort of Servitude, as they now live indeed in
many Monasteries. You must do nothing there but by a Rule, and then all
that you lose they get. If you offer to step but one Step out of the
Door, you're lugg'd back again just like a Criminal that had poison'd
her Father. And to make the Slavery yet the more evident, they change
the Habit your Parents gave you, and after the Manner of those Slaves in
old Time, bought and sold in the Market, they change the very Name that
was given you in Baptism, and _Peter_ or _John_ are call'd _Francis_, or
_Dominic_, or _Thomas_. _Peter_ first gives his Name up to Christ, and
being to be enter'd into _Dominic's_ Order, he's called _Thomas_. If a
military Servant casts off the Garment his Master gave him, is he not
look'd upon to have renounc'd his Master? And do we applaud him that
takes upon him a Ha