and means to accomplish the same. And if your zeal and fervor draw you to embrace the counsels of Jesus Christ, observe them with the greatest integrity and perfection that you possibly can, seeing they were equally given to both sexes. It cannot be, but the same merit and reward will be rendered unto you, as to others that have truly observed them. And if there be seen any want or necessity in the monasteries of poor religious women, it is because they are poor against their wills, and not through fault of their vow of poverty, or following of Evangelical counsels. For I account not much of their simple poverty, but of their patient sufferance of the same for the love of God. But I more esteem that poverty which is desired, procured, and embraced for the same love. And, if I should think, or determinately believe otherwise, I should not hold myself a good Catholic. I believe in this, and in all other things taught by our blessed Saviour, and that his counsels are good and profitable, as proceeding from God, and though they oblige not to sin, they bind, nevertheless, that man to be more perfect that followeth them, than if he had not undertaken them at ail. I hold them poor in spirit, who are poor in will, as our Saviour hath said, and myself proved; however, I believe more from God than of my own experience, that those, who by the grace of God are with all their hearts poor, lead a life most happy, as confiding, and
