Your conveyance is nimble. Both of you must be carefull, that ye do not go aside into any strangeness of Action, except a Priest, or at least some devout Person of our Religion offer himself. The Devil is not rous'd up with the presence of Here∣ticks. In the company of such, and none but such, you should demean your selves quietly and cheerfully.
Enter Lucifer and Aristotle Junior.
Lucif.
I understand your condition. You are an Heretick: you shall know better within a Cubit of Time. This is my dwelling; and that my loving Brother. Father Robert, this Gentleman is an He∣retick, and a Scholar, but a kind of Seeker.
Rob.
Woman, Boy, the Stranger is an Heretick: while we are here, you know your parts.
Arist.
This is Father Robert: but I thank the Bastille (against my will) he knows me not. What strange and unrea∣sonable carriage have this Woman and Boy.
Lucif.
Alas, miserable and unhappy Creatures, they are possest.
Rob.
Possest with Devils.
Lucif.
Sir, you seem in the shell, in the face or fore-head, to be well affected towards us, or at least less ill-affected, and less indispos'd to Goodness. I confess to you, as to a Friend, prompted by the Bird of good Omen within me, that I and my Brother there, have been eatechiz'd at Rome, and that we are Benedictine Priests. Sir, our Order is the most ancient, and most holy of all others: the Devil is troubled that we are station'd so neer him: If you were here alone, the Devil would lie down, leave barking, and be qui∣et as a Lamb, because you are yet abstract∣ed from the lines of Communication with us.
Arist.
I am as much Priest as they; for Priesthood cannot be lost, but they are ignorant of it, because they have lost my face out of their remembrance. In good time, Sir. But under favour, I have read in your Authors, that the occasion other Orders rose, was, because the Monks were defective in that part, which the new ri∣sing Order most profest: as that the Do∣minicans rose, because the Monks were Kitchin-bound, and their mouths were stop'd, they became dumb and muzzl'd in publick; good men, they dealt out their time in eating, hunting both Hare and Fox, and purging their reins according to lease: The Franciscans came, because the Monks were proud; and the Bernar∣dines for the same reason, because the Monks were fat and stately: the Jesuites came shoving in at last, because the Monks had long desisted from the teach∣ing of Children, and thereby ingaging rich Parents, and from the recovering of Nations, and thereby obliging the most rich Parent of all at Rome: and so in others. Whom did, or do the Jesuites and they love, but in order to their own ends, and for gain-sake? Who have been more scan∣dalous in all the wandrings of wickedness, than the Monks with their poatch'd Eyes in their Meditations? The worst of Gene∣va-Jesuites might better and more justly be canoniz'd after the Age is pass'd wher∣in he liv'd, than the best of Monks in these parts. And I have read in a learned Monk, that as Rivers after long running run slen∣der and muddy, so the best things gather dust, and contract corruption in length of Time. Your Pontifices maximi, grand Fathers at Rome, have commonly most excellent Resolutions and Actions at their first entrance into their Irish-wooden Chair; but they soon Reed-like hold down their Heads: The Italians jest it