are a
most unanswerable evidence that auricular confession, as a dogma, had then
no existence, and is quite a modern invention. Would it be possible that
Jerome could have forgotten to give some advices or rules about auricular
confession, to the priests of his time who asked his counsel about the best
way to fulfil their ministerial duties, if it had been one of their duties
to hear the confessions of the people? But we challenge the most devoted
modern priest of Rome to find a single line in all the letters of St Jerome
in favour of auricular confession. In his admirable letter to the priest
Nepotianus, on the life of priests, vol. II, p. 203, when speaking of the
relations of priests with women, he says: "Solus cum sola, secreto et
absque arbitrio vel teste, non sedeas. Si familiarus est aliquid loquendum,
habet nutricem majorem domus, virginem, viduam, vel maritatam; non est tam
inhumana ut nullum praeter te habeat cui se audeat credere."

"Never sit in secret, alone, in a retired place, with a female who is alone
with you. If she has any particular thing to tell you, let her take the
female attendant of the house, a young girl, a widow, or a married woman.
She can not be so ignorant of the rules of human life as to expect to have
you as the only one to whom she can trust those things."

It would be easy to cite a great number of other remarkable passages where
Jerome shows himself the most determined and implacable opponent of those
secret "tete-a-tete" between a priest and a female, which, under the
plausible pretext of mutual advice and spiritual consolation, are generally
nothing but bottomless pits of infamy and perdition for both. But this is
enough.

We have also the admirable life of St. Paulina, written by St. Jerome. And
though in it he gives us every imaginable detail of her life when young,
married and widow, though he tells us even how her bed was composed of the
simplest and rudest materials, he has not a word about her ever having gone
to confess. Jerome speaks of the acquaintances of St. Paulina and gives
their names; he enters into the minutest details of her long voyages, her
charities, her foundations of monasteries for men and women, her
temptations, human frailties, heroic virtues, her macerations and her holy
death: but he has not a word to say about the frequent or rare auricular
confessions of St. Paulina; not a word about her wisdom in the choice of a
prudent and holy (?) confessor.

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