Note 86 — CHAP. XIV.

... ubi sancta & secreta orationum aromata Deo assiduè accenderent; frequentibus metanœis vel genufluxionibus pio conditori supplicarent; à tribus sæpè flagellis, vel ad pœnitentiam, vel ad augendum meritum, corpus attererent.

I will take this occasion to inform the Reader, that Monks, or persons of religious dispositions, do not always mean, in the penances they impose on themselves, to atone for their sins, which they do not by any means consider as being in proportion to the number of their flagellations. They practise mortifications of this kind, either for the good of other persons, or for delivering souls from Purgatory, or in order (as the Reader may see from the words above quoted) to increase their own merit, and, like the Fakir mentioned in a former place, go of course to the thirty-fifth Heaven.