French Jesuit, put forward a similar plea of justification for concealment, when the assassin, Ravaillac, (that stabbed Henry the IV.) in 1610, acknowledged to him in the Confessional, his plan of Regicidal murder, as every priest who has acted in the capacity of a confessor, must admit the fact of similar cases frequently coming before him at the confessional ?"

Auricular Confession is a mere human invention, diametrically opposed to the entire tenour of the sacred Scriptures, and was first introduced as a point of doctrine in the year 1215. A special confession of sins is recommended in the Protestant liturgy, but not considered of divine institution. The following quotations relative to Confession, are from the very able work of the Rev. David O'Croly, who for upwards of twenty years performed the duties of a Confessor, and whose statements relative to the Confessional are therefore entitled to great respect :

"A priest in the chair of confession is the most arbitrary of judges. He acts without check or controul.— His admonitions, his commands, his decisions, his casuistry, are not the necessary result of fixed principles, or acknowledged maxims, but of his own particular qualities or dispositions-of his caprice, of his ignorance, of his prejudices, of his perversity, of his profligacy. Yet confession, under all these forbidding circumstances, is announced, is trumpeted as a necessary means of salva

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tion-a secunda post naufragium tabula, a second plank after shipwreck ;' and the favour of heaven, the grace of God, the justification of the sinner, is restricted, as an adjunct, to human precariousness and profanation!

"But how is this machinery of confession made to work? how is it brought into action ?—In the country the poor people practise confession, for the most part, through dread of public exposure. And how do they practise it ?—how do they prepare for it? When they hear of the priest's arrival at the station-house, they quit their labour in the field or in the barn, hurry to the Confessor, make a compendious recital of some sins they are in the constant habit of committing, and confessing, make some sort of a promise of amendment, as a matter of routine, receive absolution, hear the mass recited in Latin, take the blessed sacrament, pay the confession dues or battle with the priest, return to their labour with an obligation of repeating a number of rosaries within a given time, and think no more of the transaction. In the cities and large towns, confession is very generally neglected, except at the point of death.

"Does confession improve the morals? It is said that a bad confession or a confession not clothed with the necessary conditions, not accompanied by a change of disposition and a firm purpose of amendment, super

induces the guilt of sacrilege, and adds immeasurably to the guilt of the pretended penitent. Must not this take place in most instances, from the mode in which confession is practised; and if so, what improvement in public morals can result from it? But this is only a theoretical argument. Let the question be decided by general facts. Are those who practise confession better conducted or less immoral than those who do not ?— Are they better husbands, better fathers, better subjects, better citizens-less given to turbulence, to sedition, to lying, to injustice? Have the Roman Catholics the advantage of the Reformers in this respect ?—Compare nations together. Confession is universally practised in Spain and Portugal. It is not practised in England or Scotland. Is the state of morality, public and private, among the Spaniards and Portuguese higher in the scale of virtue than among Englishmen and Scotchmen? What was the state of morals throughout Christendom in the times of old when the benefits or evils of this practice were universally felt? History will not give a very creditable answer to the question. Will any one venture to say that the Irish Catholics, who go to confession at stations twice a year or once a year, as they would to a fair or pattern, are superior in virtue and good manners, to their Protestant fellow countrymen, who learn their Christian duties from the sacred Scriptures? Or that the Spaniards and Portuguese,

and Italians, are superior as men and as Christians, to the people of England, or Scotland, or Holland, or the Protestant States of Germany? Or that the Roman Catholics, taken collectively and individually, do not lose considerably by the comparison? And if so, it is right that malevolent, profligate priests-and many there are of this revolting description-should be enabled with impunity to lay snares for innocence, and to break into the sanctuary of private life, and make it a matter of conscience with weak-minded servants and labourers to ruin the interests of a good master and employer?"

I shall conclude the subject of confession with some passages from the Rev. Mr. Nolan's pamphlet on the unscriptural grounds of confession :

"The formidable power which, as Juvenal says, the Greek parasites had acquired at Rome, by becoming acquainted with the secrets of families, urged on the ecclesiastical abettors of private confession, to maintain and enforce this darling object of their ambition, for the Priestly tribe had well known, that of all other powers the knowledge of hearts is the most absolute and formidable. But this unscriptural custom of private confession was not long established, when the many scandals it produced forced Nectarius, Bishop of Constantinople, at the latter end of the fourth century, to abolish the novel institution: however, the degeneracy of the ninth and tenth centuries of the Romish Church, again

renewed the ungodly practice, whilst it was only in the year 1215, at the 4th Council of Lateran, it was decreed and established by Pope Innocent III., as one of the Romish doctrines. Auricular or private confession was never enjoined by the divine law, for there is no command extant for its observance, and when our Saviour pardoned a sinner's faults, the private enumeration of sins either to himself or any of the the apostles, was by no means required. I appeal to your own reason on the subject, and ask you in the language of candour, is there a single instance mentioned in the Roman Catholic Bible of an individual privately confessing to the apostles, or of the apostles privately confessing to each other?— No, for the apostles were well aware that it was God alone who knew the secrets of man's heart, and that it was God alone could pardon our sins. I shall now show the unscriptural pretext which Roman Catholics resort to in support of the doctrine of auricular confession, and shall afterwards point out the plain texts of of Scripture that are diametrically opposed to such an institution.

"Roman Catholics wish to deduce an argument in favour of private confession, from the circumstance of our Saviour recommending the lepers, after having been cured of the leprosy, to shew themselves to the priests.

Now, there can be no argument here in support of