Eu. It is, 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 Habit that Christ the Master of us all never gave him?  He is punish’d more severely for the changing it again, than if he had a hundred Times thrown away the Livery of his Lord and Emperor, which is the Innocency of his Mind.

Ca. But they say, it is a meritorious Work to enter into this voluntary Confinement.

Eu. That is a pharisaical Doctrine.  St. Paul teacheth us otherwise, and will not have him that is called free, make himself a Servant, but rather endeavour that he may be more free: And this makes the Servitude the worse, that you must serve many Masters, and those most commonly Fools too, and Debauchees; and besides that, they are uncertain, being every now and then new.  But answer me this one Thing, I beseech you, do any Laws discharge you from your Duty to your Parents?