"To say the truth, your Eminence, I do not like to confess any one who has nothing but his sins to communicate to me; I have so many of my own, that I hardly like to be burdened with those of other people. A confession of sins makes me melancholy, and I feel that I am not performing my proper duty in receiving it. Excuse the comparison, but I really feel like an actor reciting his part; and this is a part I know but imperfectly. If sometimes I am forced to play it, I do so as well as I can, but it is painful to me to listen to a catalogue of the failings and infirmities of other people." "But I know that you do confess the common people, and even nuns; why then will you not confess a bishop?" "It is true, I am more ready to confess the common people, and I have great patience also with the nuns; although I am so little interested about their sins, that when they recount them to me I never speak; letting them go on without interruption: and when they have finished, I make but few observations, directing them to ask pardon of God, who alone can absolve and pardon. I then dwell a little on the incidents of their life, good or bad as they may be, and especially on their peculiar habits; taking occasion to instil into them the moral precepts of the Gospel, correcting their faults, and exhorting them to walk in the way of virtue. Now, such schooling as this, of which both the people and nuns stand in need, and which I adopt in the confessional, your Eminence does not require." "If everybody thought like you, we poor cardinals and bishops should find no one to shrive us." "So much the better; you would then confess to God, who alone is able to remit sins. Does your Eminence imagine that the holy fathers ever dreamt of confessing? Bishop Fenelon says that he sought throughout the whole of their biography, and examined the minutest detail of their lives, and their pious and religious practices, and found not one single word about confession. 'We must therefore conclude,' he adds, 'that confession was not in use at that epoch.'" "But those fathers were saints, and therefore did not require it." "Saints, I agree, as far as holy life goes, far more so than we are; but your Eminence, I suppose, would not infer that they were without sin; for you must remember it is written, 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.'"[46] "Well, St. John here says that we ought to confess our sins; and this is precisely what I wish to do."