s we shall
only point out four of the most important, and which have most
efficaciously contributed to bring auricular confession into disrepute.

_First_. The great interest of the clergy being to consolidate the papal
power, the confession serves to ascertain the extent of hostilities
raised against that power by philosophy, impiety, the tendency to
religious reform, and the general spirit of the age. The confessor asks
every penitent whether he has any prohibited or simply profane books; if
he, or his parents, or his friends, listen to the conversation or
discourse of heretics, or murmur against the ecclesiastical power, or
satirise the conduct of the clergy, or even attend balls, theatres, or
other profane amusements. Many confessors give to these things
infinitely greater importance than to the infraction of the Decalogue.
If the answer to these questions is in the affirmative, then the
confessor requires, under pain of refusing absolution, that such books be
given up,--that all further communication with the enemies of the church
be discontinued,--and that such carnal entertainments as balls and
theatres, and the like, be renounced for ever.

_Secondly_. As the exorbitant ecclesiastical power of the Church of Rome
is bound up intimately, and by a well-known analogy, with absolute power
and civil despotism, the confessional is converted into a political
engine by a true espionage, by means of which is discovered every liberal
tendency, every germ of conspiracy or rebellion, and every thing that can
offend the supreme authority.

In the epoch of the restoration of Ferdinand VII. to Spain, after his
captivity in France, when the persecution of the liberal party became the
essence of that monarch's policy, the confessors were actively occupied,
by command of the bishops, in these odious examinations and inquiries.
Thus, the wife was made to denounce the husband, the son the father, and
the friend the friend. Peace, thus disturbed, flew from the abodes of
families; the clergy acquired new rights to the hatred of the
nation,--for many were the persecutions to which the accusations, thus
dragged from the weakness of penitents, gave rise. Freemasonry was
considered then not only as a political crime, but as a challenge to
pontifical bulls, which were fulminated against the mystery with violent
anathemas. The penitent saw himself obligated to accuse, before the
tribunal of the Inquisition, any persons whom he knew