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to be members of a lodge, although bound to such persons by the ties of kindred or friendship. _Thirdly_. The most dangerous use of the power of examination, which the confessor exercises, is that of interrogating persons of the weaker sex. A woman who once kneels before a confessor renounces from that moment the most noble, the most pure, and the most amiable of the sentiments which can animate the bosom of her sex. The searching voice and tone of her judge breaks down with violence, at once, all those barriers which modesty and self-respect by turns have raised up in her heart and conscience. Not only is she compelled to reveal the positive acts, gestures, and words, containing the least element of culpability or blame against the chastity and purity of her habits, but even the most vague and inevitable thoughts,--those against which woman recoils with indignation, and which she would even blush and refuse to give an account of to herself,--have all to be expressed and uttered by her lips without the least palliation or disguise. It is a fact generally admitted in Spain, and one spoken of without reserve in all classes of society, that the most uncontaminated and pure maiden rises from the confessional as well instructed in things of which before she was absolutely ignorant, as though she had come from a house of the vilest character. It is enough to indicate the nature of this abuse, in order to form some idea of its pernicious consequences. Women worthy of credit have declared over and over again that their first visit to the confessional opened the way to their perdition, by inflaming the imagination with ideas of a most voluptuous and obscene nature, and exciting their curiosity on subjects which had never before even entered into the mind or conception. Should any person doubt these statements, let him turn to any book of Roman Catholic devotion, which contains what is called, in ecclesiastical language, "examination of the conscience." The famous treatise, "_De Matrimonio_," cited in our introduction, by the Jesuit Sanchez, for the use of confessors of married women, contains particulars so filthy, and pictures, descriptive of certain sins, so utterly disgusting and obscene, that even the Court of Rome has been obliged to order all copies of the work to be bought up and suppressed. _Fourthly and finally_. Another of the great dangers of the indefinite authority of the confessor, with respect to peni
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