Willy Burke, or, The Irish orphan in America - Digital Repository ...

130 WILLY BURKE; OR,
—
itself to his vanity, which was, after all, his prevailing
foible. Artfully and insidiously had they worked upon
this strong characteristic of his, until they got him persuaded
that it was actually degrading for a young lad
like him to be so entirely under the control of a priest
" a mere mortal like himself "; and, then, confession
why, in the name of everything reasonable, how could
one man expect that another had power to
sins ? Did not that belong to God alone ?
forgive his
And if he
gave such authority to another, to one of his creatures,
would it not be making that creature like unto himself
in power ? " Do you not remember, Peter", would the
lady or gentleman add, " how God had styled himself i a
jealous God 9
f and, as such, think you he would invest
these priests of the Romish Church, one and all, with
one of his own Divine attributes ? No, no, impossible I.
absurd !"
Alas ! for poor Peter—all unmeet was he to wrestle
with the tempter ; it was not for him, ignorant as his mind
was concerning " the faith delivered to the saints "; and
being unable to detect the misrepresentation, and the
(perhaps wilful) perversion of the sacred text, he knew not
what to say. Fain would he have stood up for the faith
of his fathers, the faith (if such it might be called) of his
own earlier years, but he knew not how to defend it. He
had voluntarily thrown himself into temptation, and the
armour that might have enabled him to resist its attack
was no longer his. His faith, alas ! was weak and tottering—his
vanity exceeding strong, and he fell by degrees
into the pit prepared for him. Yet not all at once was
wrought the dread change ;
during many a hard encounter
with the united forces of the enemy he had endea-