Now this desire is exactly met by the Church of Rome. It presents its pardon in a tangible, visible form, and it leads the soul to rest for its assurance upon something safely done. The sin is confessed, the penance performed, the absolution pronounced, and there the matter ends. The guilty man has no further occasion to distress his mind upon the subject. The language of the catechism of the Council of Trent is very curious as illustrating the endeavour to connect pardon with a visible act. It first draws the distinction between the inward disposition of repentance and the outward act of penance, and adds, § 13, “That it is the outward penance in which the sacrament consists, and which contains certain external actions, which _are subjects of sense_ through which the inner feelings of the mind are manifest.” The next section explains the reason why the sacrament of penance is said to have been instituted, viz., to assure us of our pardon, for without it, “there must have been most anxious suspense of mind respecting _inward repentance_, since every man would have had good reason to doubt his own judgment in those things which he was doing.” To avoid this anxiety, therefore, the pardon is connected with a visible act. It is found, accordingly, in practical life, that the priest’s absolution is regarded by the Romanist in the same light as God’s forgiveness, and that, whatever be the state of heart, that visible act is deemed sufficient. Pat Burns, now a devoted Scripture Reader under the Irish Society, was for ten years the leader of a desperate gang of Ribbandmen, and he told a friend of mine that during that time he frequently went to the priest, paid him all dues regularly, and obtained absolution from time to time, as his conscience felt uneasy after the commission of crime; that the priest generally put a penance upon him, and that when it was performed, he considered himself as good a man as any other, and as fit for heaven. This same person added that the priest had never once directed him to the Word of God, or to the Lord Jesus for salvation. The same connexion between confession and reconciliation was curiously illustrated by the following fact. The priest in my friend’s parish gave nothing during the late contribution towards Irish distress, but the poor creatures excused his penuriousness on the plea that it was unlucky to take a priest’s money—that a priest’s money being paid at confession and absolution, is the price of sin, and often comes from murderers and other bad characters, as the price of absolution and pardon; and if, therefore, you buy a horse with it, he will get lame; and if you buy seed corn it will be blighted.