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e, and discoursed with a freedom and plainness I had never, before encountered. My acquaintances, however, had been brought up in convents, or familiar with them for years, and I could not gainsay their statement. "I was reluctant to believe more than I had experienced the proof, however, was destined to come in no dubious shape at a no distant day.... A dark and sullied page of experience was fast opening upon me; but so unaccustomed was the eye which scanned it, that I could not at all, at once, believe in its truth! And it was of hypocrisy so hateful, of sacrilege so terrible, and abuse so gross of all things pure and holy, and in the person of one bound by his vows, his position, and every law of his church, as well as of God, to set a high example, that, for a time, all confidence in the very existence of sincerity and goodness was in danger of being shaken, sacraments, deemed the most sacred, were profaned; vows disregarded, vaunted secrecy of the confessional covertly infringed, and its sanctity abused to an unhallowed purpose; while even private visitation was converted into a channel for temptation, and made the occasion of unholy freedom of words and manner. So ran the account of evil and a dire account it was. By it, all serious thoughts of religion were well nigh extinguished. The influence was fearful and polluting, the whirl of excitement inexpressible: I cannot enter into minute particulars here, every sense of feminine delicacy and womanly feeling shrink from such a task. This much, however, I can say that I, in conjunction with two other young friends, took a journey to a confessor, an inmate of a religious house, who lived at some distance, to lay the affair before him; thinking that he would take some remedial measures adequate to the urgency of the case. He heard our united statements, expressed great indignation, and, at once, commended us each to write and detail the circumstances of the case to the Bishop of the district. This we did; but of course, never heard the result. The reminiscences of these dreary and wretched months seem now like some hideous and guilty dream. It was actual familiarization with unholiest things! (page 63.) "The romish religion teaches that if you omit to name anything in confession, however repugnant or revolting to purity, which you even doubt having committed, your subsequent confessions are thus rendered null and sacrilegious; while it also inculcates that sins of t
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