“No proposition in Euclid could convey stronger conviction to my mind than that which I found in this dilemma. Let me but prove, said I to myself, that there exists a single flaw in the system, and it will all crumble into dust. Yet, as in a Catholic, ‘once to doubt is once to be resolved,’ I might have eternally closed my eyes, like many others, against the impression of the most glaring falsehoods; for how could I retrieve the rash step of holding my judgment in suspense while I examined? The most hideous crimes fall within the jurisdiction of a confessor; but the mortal taint of heresy cannot be removed except by the Pope’s delegated authority, which, in Spain, he has deposited in the hands of the Inquisition. Should I deliberately indulge my doubts for a moment, what a mountain of crime and misery I should bring upon my head! My office would, probably, lay me under the necessity of celebrating mass the next day, which, to do with a consciousness of unabsolved sin, is sacrilege; while this particular offence would besides involve me in the ecclesiastical sentence of _suspension_ and _interdict_. The recurring necessity of officiating at the altar, before I could remove these inabilities, would increase them every day tenfold, and give my life a foretaste of the torturing fire to which I should be doomed by the sentence of my church. These fears are not peculiar to timid or weak characters: they are the legitimate consequences of a consistent and complicated system, and cannot be dispelled but by a decided rejection of the whole. The involuntary train, however, both of feeling and thought, which was to make me break out into complete rebellion, had long been sapping the foundations of my faith, without my being aware that the whole structure nodded to its ruin. A dull sense of existence, a heaviness that palled my taste for life and its concerns, had succeeded my first ardour of devotion. Conscientiously faithful to my engagements, and secluded from every object that might ruffle the calm of my heart, I looked for happiness in the performance of my duty. But happiness was fled from me; and, though totally exempt from remorse, I could not bear the death-like silence of my soul. An unmeaning and extremely burdensome practice laid by the Church of Rome upon her clergy, contributed not a little to increase the irksomeness of my circumstances. A Catholic clergyman, who employs his whole day in the discharge of his duty to others, must yet repeat to himself the service of the day in an audible voice--a performance which neither constant practice, nor the most rapid utterance can bring within the compass of less than an hour and a half in the four-and-twenty. This exhausting exercise is enjoined under pain of mortal sin, and the restitution of that day’s income on which any portion of the office is omitted.