United States or Belarus ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
All were invited to give evidence and promised immunity in the name of the pope. Hundreds came to Paris to defend their order, but having been made to understand by the bishops that they would be burned as heretics if they retracted their confessions, they held back for a time until solemnly assured by the papal commissioners that they had nothing to fear, and might freely speak.
Without a word, he turned from the door and accompanied his friend back to the study. There were no long talks, no lectures, no remorseful confessions that evening. The two talked perhaps less than usual, and when they did it was about ordinary school topics. No reference was made either then or for a long while afterwards to the events of the evening.
By 1664 he had uncovered a "hellish knot" of the wicked women and was taking depositions against them, wringing confessions from them and sending them to gaol with all possible speed. The women were of the usual class, a herd of poor quarrelsome, bickering females who went from house to house seeking alms.
It was only the piety of the king, as Dr. Fian admitted in his confession, that overmatched the power of the evil one. Such is the story that stirred Scotland from end to end. It is a story that is easily explained. The confessions were wrung from the supposed conspirators by the various forms of torture "lately provided for witches in that country."
He had on his person matches which he had been distributing to the men of the people, and when questioned admitted that he was specially charged to keep alive the fire of the Kremlin. Many questions were asked, each eliciting new confessions, all of which were made in the most indifferent manner, and he was put in prison, and was, I think, punished as an incendiary; but of this I am not certain.
Mary ought to have stopped there, but a wicked imp seemed to have taken possession of her. "Did Helen cry, when she saw how late it was getting?" "She did at first," he said, looking very solemn, "but when I told her " His confessions were interrupted by Hutchins, who whispered to Mary that she was wanted on the telephone. "It's Mr. Forbes," he said.
"The holy fathers, monks, and friars," says Sir T. Smith, "had in their confessions, and specially in their extreme and deadly sickness, convinced the laity how dangerous a thing it was for one Christian to hold another in bondage; so that temporal men, by reason of the terror in their consciences, were glad to manumit all their villains." Hilt.
It was composed for the purpose of being appended to an edition of the Confessions in a separate volume, which is already before the public, and we have reprinted it entire, that our subscribers may be in possession of the whole of this extraordinary history.
However, it may be explained by the old proverb, of 'the devil was sick, As long as Dawson is stowed away in a dark hole, and fancies devils in every corner, he may be very anxious to make confessions, which, in broad day-light, might not seem to him so desirable. Darkness and solitude are strange stimulants to the conscience, and we may as well not lose any advantage they give us."
A high order of preaching is often the result, combined with tireless application to visiting the sick, hunting up sinners, and hearing confessions.
Word Of The Day