their purposes; but they were to live a life of angels in celibacy. They were, however, men, and their duties connected them with beings of no higher description. Young women knelt before them in all the intimacy and openness of confession. A solitary home made them go abroad in search of social converse. Love, long resisted, seized them, at length, like madness. Two I knew who died insane; hundreds might be found who avoid that fate by a life of settled systematic vice.

"The picture of female convents requires a more delicate pencil. Yet I cannot find tints sufficiently dark and gloomy to pourtray the miseries which I have witnessed in their inmates. Crime, indeed, makes its way into those recesses, in spite of the spiked walls and prison gates which protect the inhabitants. This I know with all the certainty which the self-accusation of the guilty can give. It is, besides, a notorious fact, that the nunneries in Estremadura and Portugal are frequently infested with vice of the grossest kind."

Such are the recorded opinions of men well acquainted with the workings of auricular confession, and the unnatural laws of celibacy-laws opposed not only to the sacred scriptures, the sense of the ancient world, both Jew and Gentile, the apostolical canons and apostolical usages, but even to the constitution of human nature itself.

The extracts which I have already given from the

Maynooth class-books are purity itself, compared to others which I am about to give, and which would appear to surpass the conception even of the most prurient imagination. The extracts which I am now about to give from the treatise on the precepts of the Decalogue relative to the sin of Luxury, being too grossly indecent-too disgustingly obscene, to appear in the vernacular tongue, I shall leave under the veil of Latinity :Luxury is defined an inordinate desire or use of venereal pleasures-Luxuria est inordinatus appetitus vel usus voluptatum venerearum."-Tractatus de Præceptis Decalogi, p. 205.

"Luxuria dividitur in consummatam, quæ est illicita viri et fœminæ conjunctio carnalis extra matrimonium facta; et in non consummatam, in qua non intervenit ejusmodi conjunctio. Consummata duplex est alia naturalis in qua servantur conditiones quas requirit naturæ actus, ad generationem prolis: alia contra naturam in qua non servantur illæ conditiones."—Ibid.

De peccatis Luxuriæ consummate naturalis. "Sex sunt luxuriæ consummatæ species, scilicet fornicatio, stuprum, raptus, adulterium, incestus et sacrilegium.

De Fornicatione.

Quæres 1°. quid sit fornicatio simplex?

"R. Hæc fornicatio nihil aliud est quam concubitus ex mutuo consensu viri soluti cum soluta, id est, impudica

commixtio viri nullo onjugii vel ordinis vel cognationis vel affinitatis cum fœmina, quæ nec virgo est, nec ullo vinculo conjugii aut voti castitatis obstricta.

"Quæres 3°. an inter fornicationes simplices sint aliæ aliis graviores?

"Fornicatio fidelis cum infideli est, juxta omnes, longe gravior quam cum catholica; tum propter inde nascentem nostræ Religionis despectum: tum propter periculum malæ educationis prolis, et defectionis a vera Fide, quæ ex nimio erga infidelem amore facile consequitur. Hinc, juxta quosdam, hæc circumstantia mutat speciem."-Tractatus de Præceptis Decalogi, p. 207.

The different circumstances which alter the kind or degree of sin are to be confessed, and the students, lest they should forget any of the circumstances, are ordered to commit to memory the following versicle from Bailly's Tractatus de Peccatis, p. 269, on the several kinds or degrees of sin :-"Quis, quid, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur, quomodo, quando."

The word "quis" denotes the quality or condition of the penitent; " quid" signifies the accidental quality or quantity of the act or the object ;-"ubi," the quality of the place, whether sacred or profane ;-" quibus auxiliis," the instruments and means-the partners or accomplices;-" Cur," the why or wherefore-the end proposed by the operator;-" quomodo," the manner in which the act has taken place;-" quando" the quality and duration of time which the act occupied.

"The penitent is bound to disclose the truth to the Confessor interrogating him or her on the circumstances of sin; for the Confessor has a right to examine the penitent that he may form a correct judgment of the penitent's state and properly discharge his duty."

"Confessario de circumstantiis interroganti pœnitens tenetur veritatem aperire; Confessarius enim jus habet Pœnitentem interrogandi, ut recte judicet de statu Pœnitentis, et rite suo munere fungatur."-Tractatus de Peccatis, p. 272.

On the same subject the following is laid down in Delahogue's Treatise on Penance :-" Sins are distinguished in their kind or degree when they are opposed to a different kind of virtue: thus fornication, theft, and sacrilege are different kinds of sin, because the first is opposed to chastity, the second to justice, the third to the honour due to sacred persons or things: now circumstances can change the degree of the same sin; thus the sin of luxury, which is simple fornication when committed with an unmarried girl, becomes adultery when committed with another man's wife, and incest with one connected within the prohibited degrees of matrimony, and sacrilege with a female dedicated to God. It is necessary to the integrity of confession to declare not only the kind or degree of sin, which is evident otherwise there would not be a distinct confession of sins, but also the circumstances which change the degree of the sin; the Council of Trent has ex

pressly declared and defined this in these words :-" If any one shall that in the sacrament of penance it is say not necessary by divine right to confess all mortal sins, both collectively and individually, and the circumstances which alter the degree of sin, let him be accursed."

"I° Peccata specie distinguuntur, cum pugnant contra virtutem specie diversam : sic Fornicatio, Furtum, et Sacrilegium sunt peccata specie diversa quia 1um pugnat contra castitatem, 2um contra justitiam, et 3um contra honorem rebus vel personis sacris debitum : jamvero circumstantiæ possunt mutare speciem ejusdem materialis peccati; sic peccatum luxuriæ quod simplex est fornicatio, ubi cum puella soluta committitur, fit adulterium cum uxore alterius, incestus cum cognata in gradibus ad matrimonium prohibitis, et sacrilegium cum persona Deo consecrata.

"2° Ad integritatem confessionis necesse est declarare non solum speciem peccati, quod evidens est, alioquin non foret sonfessio distincta peccatorum ; sed etiam circumstantias quæ peccati speciem mutant: id expresse declaravit et definivit Tridentina Synodus (Sess. 14. de Pœnit. Can. 7.) his verbis: "Si quis dixerit in Sacramento Pœnitentiæ necessarium non esse jure divino confiteri omnia et singula peccata mortalia.... et circumstantias que peccati speciem mutant, anathema sit.". Tractatus de Pænitentia, p. 156.