ving people's charity; doing a great deal of injury to common highway
beggars by interloping in their traffic of alms. And when they are thus
voluntarily poor, destitute, not provided with two coats, nor with
any money in their purse, they have the impudence to pretend that they
imitate the first disciples, whom their master expressly sent out in
such an equipage. It is pretty to observe how they regulate all their
actions as it were by weight and measure to so exact a proportion, as if
the whole loss of their religion depended upon the omission of the least
punctilio. Thus they must be very critical in the precise number of
knots to the tying on of their sandals; what distinct colours their
respective habits, and what stuff made of; how broad and long their
girdles; how big, and in what fashion, their hoods; whether their bald
crowns be to a hair's-breadth of the right cut; how many hours they must
sleep, at what minute rise to prayers, &c. And these several customs are
altered according to the humours of different persons and places. While
they are sworn to the superstitious observance of these trifles, they do
not only despise all others, but are very inclinable to fall out among
themselves; for though they make profession of an apostolic charity,
yet they will pick a quarrel, and be implacably passionate for such poor
provocations, as the girting on a coat the wrong way, for the wearing of
clothes a little too darkish coloured, or any such nicety not worth the
speaking of.

[Illustration: 288]

Some are so obstinately superstitious that they will wear their upper
garment of some coarse dog's hair stuff, and that next their skin
as soft as silk: but others on the contrary will have linen frocks
outermost, and their shirts of wool, or hair. Some again will not touch
a piece of money, though they make no scruple of the sin of drunkenness,
and the lust of the flesh. All their several orders are mindful of
nothing more than of their being distinguished from each other by
their different customs and habits. They seem indeed not so careful of
becoming like Christ, and of being known to be his disciples, as the
being unlike to one another, and distinguishable for followers of their
several founders. A great part of their religion consists in their
title: some will be called cordeliers, and these subdivided into
capuchines, minors, minims, and mendicants; some again are styled
Benedictines, others of the order of St. Bernar