Comedies also are so full of indecent sentiments and indelicate allusions, as cannot but offend a modest ear, and have an immoral tendency. They are not only powerful incentives to this vice, but are besides evidently unlawful, for the following reason: viz. because we cannot assist at them without contributing, by our purse and our example, to maintain a set of people in a profession, or way of life, which was always deemed infamous by the Catholic Church. Under this head likewise may be classed, the tempting of others to sin, by dissolute glances, gestures, or immodesty in dress or behaviour. By Actions. In abusing and defiling the sanctity of marriage by such liberties and irregularities as are contrary to the order of nature; in touching ourselves or others immodestly; in permitting indecent liberties to be taken with us. [N.B.-- It is necessary to explain every thing, in order to make known such circumstances as may increase or diminish the guilt, with as much modesty as possible; and also to declare, whether we have employed, or neglected to employ the necessary means of overcoming this vile passion. We should carefully distinguish what is wilful, from what is not; an effect of deliberation, from one of mere negligence; also the number of these bad actions, or at least the length of time we continued in the habit of committing them; with what sort of persons we have sinned, or desired to sin, but this without mentioning their names. And as it too often happens with young persons, who have miserably fallen into a certain sin of a lonely and abominable nature, either to conceal this crime, or not faithfully confess how often they have been guilty of it, we therefore earnestly beseech such to reflect seriously on the fatal evils in which they involve themselves. Let them consider, that all those confessions, and the communions which follow them, are only so many sacrileges, removing them still farther from God, and provoking his just indignation against them; that the longer they continue in this state of Hypocrisy, the more difficult it must be to overcome their bashfulness, and the more anguish they must feel in their own interior; that no practice is more destructive of health, beauty, or genius, than this; that it deforms and debilitates the wretched perpetrator; that it must, not only in a moral, but also in a physical sense, degrade him beneath the rank of the brute creation, and render him contemptible to mankind.] {90} By Gluttony. In exceeding the bounds prescribed by temperance; in eating or drinking to excess; in exciting others to do so; in not observing with due exactness the days of fasting and abstinence enjoined by the church; in exceeding the quantity which is usually allowed at collation. By Anger.