appear in public in extravagant habits, which may cause them to be derided by the multitude;—­suffer it not, I say, far from imposing it upon them.  Engage not all the novices indifferently to those trials which their nature most abhors; but examine well the strength of each, and suit their mortification to their temper, to their education, to the advance they make in spirituals, in such sort, that the trial may not be unprofitable, but that it may produce its effect according to that measure of grace which is given them.  If he who directs the novices has not all these considerations, it will fall out, that they who were capable of making a great proficiency in virtue, with good management, will lose their courage, and go backward; and besides, those indiscreet trials, too difficult for beginners, take off the love of the master from his novices, and cause his disciples to lessen their confidence in his directions.  In the mean time, whoever forms young people to a religious life, ought to leave nothing untried to bring them to a candid and free discovery of their evil inclinations, and the suggestions of the devil, at the same moment when they are tempted:  for without this they will never be able to disentangle themselves from the snares of the tempter; never will they arrive to a religious perfection.  On the contrary, those first seeds of evil being brooded over, and nourished, as I may say, by silence, will insensibly produce most lamentable effects; even so far, until the novices come to grow weary of regular discipline, to nauseate it, and at length throw off the yoke of Jesus Christ, and replunge themselves in the pollutions of the world.

“They amongst those young men whom you shall observe to be most subject to vain-glory, and delighted with sensual pleasures, and other vices, ought to be cured in this following manner:  Make them search for reasons, and for proofs, against those vices to which they are inclined; and when they have found many, help them to compose some short discourses on them.  Cause them afterwards to pronounce those discourses, either to the people in the church, or in the hospitals, to those who are in a way of recovery, so as to be present at them, or in other places;—­there is reason to hope, that the things which they have fixed in their minds, by constant study and strong application, will be at least as profitable to themselves as to their audience.  Doubtless they will be ashamed not to profit by those remedies which they propose to others, and to continue in those vices from which they endeavour to dissuade their hearers.  You shall use proportionably the same industry towards those sinners who cannot conquer themselves so far, as, they commonly say, to put away the occasions of their sin, or to make restitution of those goods which they have gotten unlawfully, and detain unjustly from other men.  After you have endeared yourself to them by a familiar acquaintance, advise them to say that to their own hearts which they would say to a friend on the like occasion, and engage, as it were for the exercise of their parts, to devise such arguments as condemn their actions in the person of another.