I have here in my hands, and under my eyes, one of their most remarkable secret books, written, or at least approved, by one of their greatest and best bishops and cardinals, the Cardinal De Bonald, Archbishop of Lyons. The book is written for the use of the priests alone. Its title is in French, "Examen de Conscience des Pretres." At page 34 we read:-- "Have I left certain persons to make the declarations of their sins in such a way that the imagination, once taken and impressed by pictures and representations, could be dragged into a long course of temptations and grievous sins? The priests do not pay sufficient attention to the continual temptations caused by the hearing of confessions. The soul is gradually enfeebled in such a way that, at the end, the virtue of chastity is for ever lost." Here is the address of a priest to other priests when he suspects that nobody but his co-sinner brethren hear him. Here is the honest language of truth. In the presence of God, those priests acknowledge that they have not a sufficient fear of those _constant_ (what a word--what an acknowledgment--constant!) temptations, and they honestly confess that those temptations come from the hearing of the confessions of so many scandalous sins. Here the priests honestly acknowledge that those constant temptations, at the end, destroy _for ever_ in them the holy virtue of purity![3] Ah! would to God that all the honest girls and women whom the devil entraps into the snares of auricular confession could hear the cries of distress of those poor priests whom they have tempted--_for ever destroyed!_ Would to God that they could see the torrents of tears shed by so many priests because, from the hearing of confessions, they had _for ever_ lost the virtue of purity! They would understand that the confessional is a snare, a pit of perdition, a Sodom for the priest; and they would be struck with horror and shame at the idea of the _continual_, shameful, dishonest, degrading temptations by which their confessor is tormented day and night--they would blush on account of the shameful sins which their confessors have committed--they would weep over the irreparable loss of their purity--they would promise before God and men that the confessional-box should never see them any more--they would prefer to be burned alive, if any sentiment of honesty and charity remained in them, rather than consent to be a cause of _constant_ temptation and damnable sin to that man. Would that respectable lady go any more to confess to that man if, after her confession, she could hear him lamenting the continual, shameful temptations which assail him day and night, and the damning sins which he has committed on account of what she has confessed to him? No--a thousand times no!