Note 4 — CHAP. I.

The word Discipline originally signified in general, the censures and corrections which persons who were guilty of Sins, received from their Superiors; and when Flagellation was to be part of those corrections, it was expressly mentioned; and they called such Discipline, as the Reader will see in the Sequel of this Book, “the discipline of the whip,” (disciplina flagelli). As Flagellation grew afterwards to be the common method of doing penance that prevailed among persons in religious Orders, the bare word discipline became in course of time the technical word to express that kind of chastisement: thus, the Reader will find hereafter an instance in which Flagellation, when too long continued, is called “the madness of too long discipline,” (longioris disciplinæ insania). And at last, those kinds of whips made of knotted and twisted cords, commonly used for the above pious exercises, have also been called by the same name; and the word discipline has become in French, for instance, the appropriated word to express the instrument of religious flagellation. Thus, in Molière’s Play, called the Tartuffe, or the Hypocrite, Tartuffe tells his Man, “Laurent, lock up my hair-cloth, and discipline, and pray that Heaven may always illuminate you.”