Subsequently, when the papists attempted to reinstate the old system,
the females remonstrated, barred the doors, and armed themselves with
knives and spits from the kitchen, but the French soldiers succeeded in
reducing them by force. During the contest the cry of the women was, "We
will not be the _wives_ of the priests!"

In one of the convents in that city, opened by the republicans, were
found evidences of some of the worst crimes mentioned by Maria Monk; and
in another were multitudes of bones, including those of children.

A strong effort will probably be made again, by the parties exposed by
this book, to avoid the condemnation which it throws upon convents--the
strongholds of superstition, corruption, and _foreign influence_,
in the United States. The Romish publications, although greatly reduced
in number within a few years, will probably pour out much of their
unexhausted virulence, as it is their vocation to misrepresent, deny,
and vilify. They will be ready to pronounce a general anathema on all
who dare to reprint, or even to read or believe, such strong accusations
against the "holy retreats" of those whom they pretend are "devoted to
lives of piety." But we will challenge them to do it again, by placing
some of their iron bishops and even popes in the forefront.

In the year 1489, in the reign of Henry VII, Pope Innocent VIII
published a bull for the Reformation of Monasteries, entitled, in Latin,
"_De Reformatione Monasceriorum_," in which he says that, "members
of monasteries and other religious places, both Clemian, Cistercian, and
Praemonstratensian, and various other orders in the Kingdom of England"
--"lead a lascivious and truly dissolute life." And that the papist
reader may receive this declaration with due reverence, we copy the
preceding words in Latin, as written by an infallible pope, the man