nd to the multitudes who have
lived mortified lives.

For this I have not one answer, but twenty, which admit of no reply.
It is too easy to show that priests in general, and especially the
confessor, were then totally different from what they have been for the
two last centuries.

I. The first answer will seem, perhaps, harsh--_Then the priest
believed_. "What! the priest no longer believes? Do you mean to say
that in speaking of his faith with so much energy, he is a hypocrite
and a liar?" No, I will allow him to be sincere. But there are two
manners of believing, there are many degrees in faith. We are told
that Lope de Vega (who, as it is known, was a priest) could not
officiate: at the moment of the sacrifice, his fancy pictured the
Passion too strongly, he would burst into tears and faint. Compare
this with the coquettish pantomine of the Jesuit, who acts mass at
Fribourg, or with the prelate whom I have seen at the altar showing to
advantage his delicate small hand. The priest believed, and _his
penitent believed_. Unheard-of terrors, miracles, devils, and hell,
filled the church. The motto, "God hears you," was engraven not only
in the wood, but in the heart. It was not a plank that partitioned off
the confessional, but the sword of the archangel, the thought of the
last judgment.

II. If the priest spoke in the name of the _spirit_, he was partly
justified in doing so, having purchased spiritual power by the _suicide
of the body_. His long prayers at night would have sufficed to wear
him out; but they found more direct means in excessive fasts. Fasting
was the diet of those poor schools of Beggars and Cappets, whose scanty
meal was composed of arguments. Half dead before the age of manhood,
they cooled their blood with herbs producing a deadly chill, and
exhausted it by frequent bleedings. The number of bleedings, to which
the monks had to submit, was provided in their rules. Their stomachs
were soon destroyed, and their strength impaired. Bernard and Theresa
were weakened by continual vomitings, even the sense of taste was lost:
the Saint, says his biographer, took blood for butter. _Mortification_
was not then an idle word, it was not a separation of the body and
soul, but a genuine and honest suppression of the body.

III. The priest believed himself to be, in this sense, the man of the
spirit, and he really was so, by the _superiority of culture_. _He_
knew everything, the layman n