the seal of confession, and that they in no way encouraged and abetted it, yet we cannot acquit them of the charge of being accomplices in the crime. We have related at p. 140 that at Grenada the Jesuits had propounded a doctrine that there are circumstances in which the confessor may oblige his penitent to discover his accomplices or permit him to inform the competent authorities of the crime. It is true that the crime specified was heresy, but we think that the same may be said of murder or any other crime, and that that doctrine which is good at Grenada must be equally good in England. But let that pass, and let us proceed. The conspirators, at least five of them, declared to the confessor, that they were meditating a horrible crime, that they were taking measures to accomplish it, and that they were sure of success. The confessor granted them absolution, and another Jesuit administered to them the communion. Now, the indispensable condition of the validity of absolution from a sin, is, that the penitent feel repentance or contrition for having committed it. How then could Father Greenway absolve the conspirators from a crime of which they not only did not repent, but which they were proceeding at all hazards to perpetrate? The evil spirit himself expounds this doctrine to the unfortunate Guido, to whom he proves that the absolution he had received from the Pope from a sin he had not yet committed was null. “No power can the impenitent absolve, Nor to repent and will at once consist, By contradiction absolute forbid.”[282] We conclude from this, that either your confession is merely a snare to entrap fools, or that Greenway considered the conspiracy not a hellish crime, but a meritorious deed!