Christendom at the Opening of the Sixteenth Century - James Aitken Wylie

Besides those we have enumerated there were a
host of instrumentalities all directed to the same
end, the enforcement even of the government of
Rome, mainly in things temporal, in the dominions
of other sovereigns. Chief among these was the
Confessional. The Confessional was called "the
place of penitence;" it was, in reality, a seat of
jurisdiction. It was a tribunal the highest of all
tribunals, because to the Papist the tribunal of God.
Its terrors as far transcended those of the human
judgment-seat, as the sword of eternal anathema
transcends the gallows of temporal governments. It
afforded, moreover, unrivaled facilities for sowing
sedition and organizing rebellion. Here the priest
sat unseen, digging, hour by hour and day after
day, the mine beneath the prince he had marked out
for ruin, while the latter never once suspected that
his overthrow was being prepared till he was
hurled from his seat. There was, moreover, the
device of dispensations and indulgences. Never did
merchant by the most daring venture, nor
statesman by the most ingenious scheme of
finance, succeed in amassing such store of wealth
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