[488] Beauties of England, vol. xi, 245.
[489a] See Parkin 126.
[489b] We cannot find what church this was.
[489c] Men were then in England conveyed with the land.
[490] Parkin as before.
[491a] Parkin, 129.
[491b] Eccl. History, 1. 447. Ed. 1774.
[495] “As the pontiff, (says Mosheim) allowed these four Mendicant orders the liberty of travelling wherever they thought proper, of conversing with persons of all ranks, of instructing the youth and the multitude wherever they went; and, as these monks exhibited, in their outward appearance and manner of life, more striking marks of gravity and holiness than were observable in the other monastic societies, they arose all at once to the very summit of fame, and were regarded with the utmost esteem and veneration throughout all the countries of Europe. The enthusiastic attachment to these sanctimonious beggars went so far, that, as we learn from the most authentic records, several cities were divided, or cantoned out, into four parts, with a view to these four orders; the first part was assigned to the Dominicans; the second to the Franciscans; the third to the Carmelites; and the fourth to the Augustinians. The people were unwilling to receive the sacraments from any other hands than those of the Mendicants, to whose churches they crowded to perform their devotion, while living, and were extremely desirous to deposite there also their remains after death; all which occasioned grievous complaints among the ordinary priests, to whom the care of souls was committed, and who considered themselves as the spiritual guides of the multitude.” [These Medicants were evidently the Methodists and Evangelical Clergy of those days, and might, for aught we know, merit the popularity which they had acquired as much to the full as their successors of the present day.] “Nor did the influence and credit of the Mendicants end here; for we find that they were employed, not only in spiritual matters, but also in temporal and political affairs of the greatest consequence, in composing the differences of princes, concluding treaties of peace, concerting alliances, presiding in cabinet councils, governing courts, levying taxes, and other occupations, not only remote from, but absolutely inconsistent with, the monastic character and profession.” Mosh. E. H. iii. 53.
[498] See Mosheim E. H. ii. 412, &c.—Let us not think of reproaching the papists for the absurdities of their Carmelites:—Our own protestant order of free-masons can any day match them in the ridiculous extravagance of their pretensions to high antiquity, or empty and pompous boasts of a very remote and dignified origin. Nor were the Carmelites perhaps in any view less respectable than the said protestant order.
[499a] Beaut. of Engl. vol. xi.