Every honest priest will at once admit that his most intelligent and pious penitents, particularly among women, are constantly tortured by the fear of having omitted to disclose some sinful deeds or thoughts. Many of them, after having already made several general confessions, are constantly urged by the pricking of their conscience, to begin afresh, in the fear that their first confessions had some serious defects. Those past confessions, instead of being a source of spiritual joy and peace, are, on the contrary, like, so many Damocles' swords, day and night suspended over their heads, filling their souls with the terrors of an eternal death! Sometimes the terror-stricken consciences of those honest and pious women tell them that they were not sufficiently contrite; at another time, they reproach them for not having spoken sufficiently plain on some things fitter to make them blush. On many occasions, too, it has happened that sins which one confessor had declared to as venial, and which had long ceased to be confessed, another more scrupulous than the first would declare to be damnable. Every confessor thus knows perfectly well that he proffers what is flagrantly false every time he dismisses his penitents, after confession, with the salutation:--"Go in peace, thy sins are forgiven thee." But it is a mistake to say that the soul does not find peace in auricular confession: in many cases, peace is found. And if the reader desires to learn something of that peace, let him go to the grave-yard, open the tombs, and peep into the sepulchres. What awful silence! What profound quiet! What terrible and frightful peace! You hear not even the motion of the worms that creep in, and the worms that creep out, as they feast upon the dead carcase! Such is the peace of the confessional! The soul, the intelligence, the honor, the self-respect, the conscience, are there sacrificed. There they must die! Yes, the confessional is a veritable tomb of human conscience, a sepulchre of human honesty, dignity and liberty; the grave-yard of human soul! By its means, man, whom God hath made in his own image, is converted into the likeness of the beast that perishes; woman, created by God to be the glory and help-mate of man, is transformed into the vile and trembling slave of the priest. In the confessional, man and woman attain to the highest degree of popish perfection: they become as dry sticks, as dead branches, as silent corpses, in the hands of their confessors. Their spirits are destroyed, their consciences are stiff, their souls are ruined. This is the supreme and perfect result achieved, in its highest victories, by the Church of Rome. There is, verily, peace to be found in auricular confession--yes, but it is the peace of the grave! * * * * * CHAPTER IX. THE DOGMA OF AURICULAR CONFESSION A SACRILEGIOUS IMPOSTURE. * * * * *