The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

ATROCITIES OP THE C0>;FESSI0NAL.S29is at liberty to suggest new crimes and modes of sinninghitherto unthought of,and, by sowing insidiously the seedsof all evil in the mind, to pollute and ruin the conscience heprofesses to disburden.There is no better school of wickednesson earth. History testifies, that for every offenderwhom the confessional has reclaimed, it has hardened thousands;—forone it may have saved, it has destroyed millions.And what must be the state of that one mind,—the confessor's,—intowhich is daily poured the accumulated filth andvice of a neighbourhood ? He cannot decline the dreadfuloffice although he were willing. He must be the depositoryof allthe imagined and of all the acted wickedness aroundhim. To him it all gravitates, as to its centre. Every purposeof lust, every deed of vengeance, every piece of villany,flows thither, forming a fresh contribution to the alreadyfearful and fathomless mass of known wickedness within him.*This black and loathly mass he carries about with him,—hecarries within him. His bosom is a very sepulchre of rottennessand stench,— " a closet lock and key of villanous secrets."Wherever he is, alone or in society, or at the altar,he is chained to a corpse. The rank effluvia of itsputrescence encompasses him like an atmosphere. Miserabledoom ! He cannot rid himself from the corruption* The Rev. L. J. Nolan, who was many years a priest of the Church ofRome, but is now a Protestant clergyman in connection with the EstablishedChurch of Ireland, after his conversion published his experienceof the confessional. He says,— "The most awful of all considerationsis this, that through the confessional I have been frequently apprized ofintended assassinations and most diabolical conspiracies ; and still, fromthe ungodly injunctions of secrecy in the Romish creed, lest, as PeterDens says, the confessional should become odious, I dared not give theslightest intimation to the marked-out victims of slaughter." He thenproceeds to narrate a number of cases in which he was made the depository,beforehand, of the most diabolical purposes of assassination, parricide,&c., all of which were afterwards carried out." (A Third Pamphlet, by theRev. L. J. Nolan, pp. 22-27 ; Dublin, 1838.) See also " Auriculai- Confessionand Popish Nunneries, by "W. Hogan j" Lond. 1851.