Some have gone even farther and have constructed those instruments for driving souls to despair,--their decrees that the penitent must rehearse all sins anew for which he neglected to make the imposed satisfaction. Yea, what would not they venture to do, who were born for the sole purpose of carrying all things into a tenfold captivity? Moreover, how many are possessed with the notion that they are in a saved state and are making satisfaction for their sins, if they but mumble over, word for word, the prayers the priest has imposed, even though they give never a thought meanwhile to amending their life! They believe that their life is changed in the one moment of contrition and confession, and it remains only to make satisfaction for their past sins. How should they know better, when they are not taught otherwise? No thought is given here to the mortifying of the flesh, no value is attached to the example of Christ, Who absolved the woman taken in adultery and said to her, "Go, and sin no more!" [John 8:11] thereby laying upon her the cross--the mortifying of her flesh. This perverse error is greatly encouraged by our absolving sinners before the satisfaction has been completed, so that they are more concerned about completing the satisfaction which lies before them, than they are about contrition, which they suppose to be past and over when they have made confession. Absolution ought rather to follow on the completion of satisfaction, as it did in the ancient Church, with the result that, after completing the work, penitents gave themselves with greater diligence to faith and the living of a new life. But this must suffice in repetition of what I have more fully said on indulgences, and in general this must suffice for the present concerning the three sacraments, which have been treated, and yet not treated, in so many harmful books, theological as well as juristic. It remains to attempt some discussion of the other sacraments also, lest I seem to have rejected them without cause. CONFIRMATION I wonder what could have possessed them to make a sacrament of confirmation out of the laying on of hands, which Christ employed when He blessed young children [Mark 10:16], and the apostles when they imparted the Holy Spirit [Acts 8:17; Acts 19:6; Acts 6:6; Mark 16:18], ordained elders and cured the sick, as the Apostle writes to Timothy, "Lay hands suddenly on no man." [1 Tim. 5:22] Why have they not also turned the sacrament of the bread into confirmation? For it is written in Acts ix, "And when he had taken meat he was strengthened,"[129] and in Psalm civ, "And that bread may cheer[130] man's heart." [Ps. 104:15] Confirmation would thus include three sacraments--the bread, ordination, and confirmation itself. But if everything the apostles did is a sacrament, why have they not rather made preaching a sacrament?