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The plan is but a loose sequence of meditations on successive aspects of Christ as suggested by images or advocations of His divine person, or even of parts of His human body: Lion, Bull, Lily, Sword, Crown, Head, Knees.

To such a point does this exclusive affection arrive, that the devotees are apt to dispute among themselves as to the respective merits of the advocations to which each consecrates his worship.

This pious exercise consists in a paternoster and ten Ave Marias, repeated five times. The advocations of the Virgin de las Carretas, the Virgin of the Dew, and some others, are of an origin now unknown. In truth, this multiplication of the same religious type has no fixed limits.

Although the Virgin is in the eyes of Spaniards but an only being, and although they do not believe that there is more than one mother of God, yet the devotion which they tender to her is diversified in its forms according to the various advocations which the clergy have invented, which the popes have sanctioned, and to which the liturgy has given an official character.

The chief mysteries in the life of Jesus Christ, viz., the nativity, the epiphany, the passion, the resurrection, ascension, and others,—the celebrated epochs in the life of the Virgin Mary, and some of her advocations, and the apostles, and a few favourite saints,—are the objects to which those different feast-days are consecrated; and as on these all kinds of labour are suspended, and as their number, including Sundays, forms nearly a third part of the whole year, the vacuum they leave in productive labour and in the exercise of professional avocations is incalculable; so that feast-days may be enumerated among the various causes tending to bring about the poverty of the nation.

Item, that the said abbot hath granted leases of farms and advocations first to one man, and took his fine, and also hath granted the same lease to another man for more money; and then would make to the last taker a lease or writing, with an antedate of the first lease, which hath bred great dissension among gentlemen as Master Blunt and Master Moysey, and other takers of such leases and that often.

Some few of those advocations require particular colours to be observed in the vestments appropriated to the respective statues; the Virgin of Carmen, for example, must be dressed in white and dark grey; that of the Conception in white and blue; that of Griefs in blue and red; that of Solitude in white and black, and so on.