David Carnegie Andrew Agnew

“ Necessary reformations might have repurg’d Monasteries as well as the Church, without abolishing of them; and they might have been still houses of Religion without having any dependence upon Rome. . . . Yet we must go to heaven; wherever we live we must live to God that we may live with God; therefore — if we cannot have a material — we must have a spiritual cloister, which may defend us against temptations, and guide and assist us in doing our duty. Such a one is the love of Jesus; it will protect us against all dangers and spiritual enemies better than the strongest walls of any Abbey ”

“ Must we retire into Thebais with the Fathers of the desert? — Must we confine ourselves to the solitude of a Monastick Cell? — Or shall we become Quakers and profess the sullenness of melancholy fanaticks? — Why, truly in Popish Countreys the Cloister hath ingrossed the name of Religion, and they that would be, or be thought to be, devout beyond others, do usually put on a Fryers hood, and imbrace the Rule of some Religious Order. ”

“ And possibly our Lay-Abbots will also be frighted at it, as though the dispossest Coenobites were coming again to reclaim their old mansions and fat indowments. . . . [However] its design is not to alter the establish’d religion, but to make us more devout and sincere in the profession thereof — nor yet to inrich any persons with temporal estates, but to make us gather treasures in heaven and set our affections on things above. ”