roy the
cause of the miseries of which they complain, by reason that the ills
they suffer, are only the punishment of their offences. On this account,
when they are willing to confess, you shall hear their confessions, with
all the leisure you can afford them. After this care taken of their
souls, you are not to be unmindful of their bodies; but recommend the
distressed, with all diligence and affection, to the administrators of
the hospital, and procure them, by other means, all relief within your
power.

"You shall also visit the prisoners, and excite them to make a general
confession of their lives. They have more need than others to be stirred
up to it, because among that sort of people there are few to be found,
who ever made an exact confession. Pray the Brotherhood of Mercy to have
pity on those wretches, and labour with the judges for their enlargement;
in the mean time, providing for the most necessitous, who oftentimes have
not wherewithal to subsist.

"You shall serve, and advance what lies in you, the Brotherhood of Mercy.
If you meet with any rich merchants, who possess ill-gotten goods, and
who, being confessed, are willing to restore that which appertains not to
them, though of themselves they entrust you with the money for
restitutions, when they are ignorant to whom it is due, or that their
creditors appear not--remit all those sums into the hands of the
Brotherhood of Mercy, even though you know of some necessitous persons,
on whom such charities might be well employed.

"Thus you shall not expose yourself to be deceived by those wicked men,
who affect an air of innocence and poverty, and who cannot so easily
surprise the Brotherhood, whose principal application is to distinguish
betwixt counterfeits and those who are truly indigent.

"And, besides, you will gain the more leisure for those functions, which
are yours in a more especial manner, which are devoted to the conversion
of souls, and shall employ your whole time therein, some of which must
otherwise be taken up in the distribution of alms, which cannot be
performed without much trouble and distraction. In fine, by this means,
you shall prevent the complaints and suspicions of a sort of people who
interpret all things in the worst meaning, and who might perhaps persuade
themselves, that, under the pretence of paying other men's debts, you
divert the intention of the money given, and employ in your own uses some
part of what was entrusted wit