“To exercise the privileges of my office for the benefit of my fellow-creatures, was now my exclusive aim and purpose. I daily celebrated mass, with due preparation, preached often, and rejected none that applied to me for confession. The best ascetic writers of the Church of Rome were constantly in my hands. I made a study of the Fathers; but, though I had the Scriptures among my books, it was, according to custom, more for reference than perusal. These feelings, this state of mental abstraction, is by no means uncommon, for a time, among young priests whose hearts have not been withered by a course of premature profligacy. It would be absurd to expect it in such as embrace the clerical state as a trade, or are led to the church by ambition, and least of all among the few that would never bind themselves with the laws of celibacy, had they not previously freed their minds from all religious fears. Yet, among my numerous acquaintance in the Spanish clergy, I have never met with any one, possessed of bold talents, who has not, sooner or later, changed from the most sincere piety to a state of unbelief.[21] Were every individual who has undergone this internal transformation to describe the steps by which it was accomplished, I doubt not but the general outline would prove alike in all. I shall, however, conclude my narrative by faithfully relating the origin and progress of the total change that took place in my mind within little more than a year after taking priest’s orders. [21] See Note E.