For confirmation of these remarks, we refer the reader to the book itself. But we cannot refrain from quoting, in spite of its length, the following incident related by Father Weston. It is a remarkable example of the salutary effect of the Sacrament of Penance: “For there lay in a certain heretical house a Catholic who, with the consent of his keeper, had come to London for the completion of some urgent business. He had been committed to a prison in the country, a good way out of London. He was seized, however, and overpowered by a long sickness which brought him near to death. The woman who nursed him, being a Catholic, had diligently searched the whole city through to find a priest, but in vain. She then sent word to me of the peril of that person, and entreated me, if it could be contrived, to come to his assistance, as he was almost giving up the ghost. I went to him when the little piece of gold obtained for me the liberty to do so. I explained that I was a priest, for I was dressed like a layman, and that I had come to hear his confession. ‘If that is the reason why you have come, it is in vain,’ he said; ‘the time for it is passed away.’ I said to him: ‘What! are you not a Catholic? If you are, you know what you have to do. This hour, which seems to be your last, has been given you that by making a good and sincere confession you may, while there is time, wash away the stains of your past life, whatever they are.’ He answered: ‘I tell you that you have come too late: that time has gone by. The judgment is decided; the sentence has been pronounced; I am condemned, and given up to the enemy. I cannot hope for pardon.’ ‘That is false,’ I answered, ‘and it is a most fearful error to imagine that a man still in life can assert that he is already deprived of God’s goodness and abandoned by his grace, in such a way that even when he desires and implores mercy it should be denied him. Since your faith teaches you that God is infinitely merciful, you are to believe with all certitude that there is no bond so straitly fastened but the grace of God can unloose it, no obstacle but grace has power to surmount it.’ ‘But do you not see,’ he asked me, ‘how full of evil spirits this place is where we are? There is no corner or crevice in the walls where there are not more than a thousand of the most dark and frightful demons, who, with their fierce faces, horrid looks, and atrocious words threaten perpetually that they are just going to carry me into the abyss of misery. Why, even my very body and entrails are filled with these hateful guests, who are lacerating my body and torturing my soul with such dreadful cruelty and anguish that it seems as if I were not so much on the point merely of going there, as that I am already devoted and made over to the flames and agonies of hell. Wherefore, it is clear that God has abandoned me for ever, and has cast me away from all hope of pardon.’