“Auricular confession,” with its authorised rules and _questions_, seems, above everything in human intercourse, adapted to corrupt the heart of the priest, and prepare him for the most vicious practices. And the dangers to unprotected nuns cannot but be inexpressible. How can a virtuous mind contemplate this practice, in the nature of things, without revolting from it with indignation? The MIND surrendered to the keeping of a fellow-being, who probes every feeling and knows every thought!--the MIND forced into a mould, as of iron, and there held by an unholy priest!--_maidens_ unbosoming themselves in secret to unmarried men,--to men who are trained up from childhood for the priesthood, as the sure means of a respectable livelihood! _Married women_ exhibiting the inmost recesses of their hearts to strange men! Is there not iniquity unspeakable in this practice? It seems necessary, therefore, to complete the present work, to offer some exhibition of the state of those prisons of females, kept under the government of priests,--and especially as they exist in the metropolis of the Roman pontiff. This appears essential to the “INQUISITION REVEALED.” Popish policy regarding convents, and the fact of their being secret prisons, similar to those of the Inquisition, will appear more fully from an atrocious case of priestly intrigue, in violation of the law of God, the particulars of which are given in _The Times_ newspaper of Friday, November 15, 1844:-- “A popular French writer has recently asserted, in a work of fiction, in which he virulently, though not always unjustly, assails the policy of the Romish clergy, that the pretensions of the more unscrupulous agents of that church openly defy all the most sacred relations of mankind; that they dare to set at nought even the ties of filial duty; and that no artifices are too base for them to resort to, in furtherance of their ends. But we have met with nothing in the pages of fiction which illustrates these serious and almost incredible charges more forcibly, than an occurrence which has actually taken place in the course of the present year, in one of the capitals of the south of Europe. We feel impelled to give to these painful events, and most sinister machinations, a greater publicity than they have hitherto received; not only because it is well that the actors in such transactions should learn, that they cannot escape the animadversions of Europe, but because the case we are about to relate affords a warning not to be overlooked by our Protestant fellow-countrymen, whose families may chance to fall within the reach of the same dangerous influences.