This is indeed taking out of the sacraments all their life and spirit, and reducing them to a mere form. This is what our Lord called the religion of the Scribes and Pharisees, who made clean the outside of the platter, but left the inside greasy and filthy. These go through the form of confession, merely keeping up an outside appearance of piety, but their hearts are full of rottenness and filth. Does the Church teach any such thing? No, far from it. She teaches that the indispensable condition of forgiveness is a true, heartfelt sorrow for every mortal sin, with a firm, unflinching determination to avoid every such sin for the rest of one's life. {199} She is the _Holy_ Catholic Church, and her teaching is as pure as the sunlight on this point; it is clearly laid down in all her catechisms and instructions, so that no one need make any mistake about it. Nevertheless the Lord foresaw that many would blind themselves in spite of all this. He represents them standing at the judgment and saying: "_Lord, have we not eaten and drunk at thy table?_" [Footnote 81] [Footnote 81: St. Luke xiii., 26. ] Yes, we received the sacraments; certainly there can't be any mistake, it must be all right. What is the answer? "_Depart from me, workers of iniquity, I know not whence ye are_." [Footnote 82] [Footnote 82: St. Luke xiii., 27.] Sacraments received wrongfully work out, not the salvation, but the damnation of the soul. So St. Paul speaks of those who, through their sins, did not discern the Lord's body, being weak and sickly--speaks also of eating and drinking judgment to one's self. If this last is a false and fatal error, how much more horrible is it when it assumes a new shape and comes out in this form: _Oh, I will live as I please, and the last sacraments will make it all right. I'll send for the priest before I die_. Judas when finishing his act of perfidy, kissed the Saviour whom he had deliberately and wantonly betrayed. {200} So these desert and betray Christ and his holy religion, and then go to make it up with a last kiss; a kiss full of hypocrisy and only given through a dire necessity that presses them. Is any hope held out in Scripture for the victims of such delusions? "_If ye live according to the flesh ye shall die_." [Footnote 83] [Footnote 83: Rom. viii., 13.] "_What a man soweth that shall he reap_." [Footnote 84] [Footnote 84: Gal. vi., 7.] "_Ye shall cry unto me Lord, but the Lord will, not hear you_." "Ye shall seek me and ye shall not find me; ye shall die in your sins." [Footnote 85] [Footnote 85: St. John viii., 21.]