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