ARTICLE III.– OF CONVENTS AND OTHER INSTITUTIONS.

The convents and other institutions formerly established with good intentions, for the purpose of rearing learned persons, and chaste and modest females, should again be restored to this use, in order that we may have pastors, preachers, and officers in the church, and other persons competent to the administration of civil government, and also well educated women as wives and mothers, &c.

Where these institutions do not contribute to this object, it is better to leave them lying waste, or to pull them down, than that they should with their blasphemous services devised by men, regarded as something better than the common condition of Christians, and as offices and orders instituted of God. For all this is also opposed to the first and chief article concerning the redemption through Jesus Christ. And besides, they are also, like all other human inventions, neither commanded, nor necessary, nor useful, but dangerous and productive of vain labor and trouble, as the Prophets call such services to God, aven, that is, labor.