The Protestant element in the Romish Church was shut up in monasteries during many centuries, and remained there as a foreign substance, an alien element included in the vast body.

When a bullet, or other foreign substance, is lodged in the flesh, the vital powers go to work and build up a little wall around it, and shut it in.

So when Catholics came who were not satisfied with a merely sacramental salvation, and longed for a higher life, the sagacity of the Church put them together in convents, and kept them by themselves, where they could do no harm.

One of the curious homologons of history is this repetition in Europe of the course of events in Asia.

Buddhism was, for many centuries, tolerated in India in the same way.