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My feet were sufficiently painful for me to be glad to lie idly among the piles of cabbages and while the time in day-dreams. Aged confessors might go forth sighing, "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" but to the young and buoyant, change of occupation and foreign travel have great allurement, even when rudely come by. The boatman seemed an honest poor fellow.
But this progress is exactly similar to that progress which the Jesuits made in the magnificence of their churches, in the wealth they had hoarded in their colleges, in the fashionable character of their professors and confessors and preachers, in the adaptation of their doctrines to the taste of the rich and powerful, in the elegance and arrogance and worldliness of their dignitaries.
In these books to say nothing of the insatiable and unheard of avarice of which almost every letter in them vilely smells they laid down those same impious and heretical doctrines, and laid them down in such wise that confessors were bound by their oath to be faithful and insistent in urging them upon the people.
As for the dress I do not venture to consider whether our grandmothers were less modest than our wives are, or if the confessors of past times were more indulgent than those of the present; I am inclined to think the latter, for seventy years ago women prided themselves upon being Christianlike and devout, and would not have disobeyed the director of their conscience in so grave and important a matter.
The great dearth of learned preachers and confessors that prevailed about the middle of the sixteenth century appealed strongly to the Jesuits to throw themselves into the breach, and thus against the original intention of their founder, they became the spiritual guides of those who made the history of Europe for the next hundred years and more.
"I will carry your just complaint to the cardinal; will you write out your petition?" "Kindly give me a model." I gave her a rough draft, which she copied out and signed, and I laid it before his eminence. A few days after the Dominican was removed, and his penitents divided amongst the three remaining confessors.
"Go forth, O Christian soul," the Monsignor read, "in the name of God the Father Almighty, who created thee; in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who suffered for thee; in the name of the Holy Ghost, who was poured forth upon thee; in the name of the Angels and Archangels; in the name of the Thrones and Dominations; in the name of the Principalities and Powers; in the name of the Cherubim and Seraphim; in the name of the Patriarchs and Prophets; in the name of the holy Apostles and Evangelists; in the name of the holy Martyrs and Confessors; in the name of the holy Monks and Hermits; in the name of the holy Virgins and of all the Saints of God; may thy place be this day in peace, and thy abode in holy Sion.
As for the Eucharist, transubstantiation, the real presence, it was all no mystery to them, but palpable evidence, and yet they were not Jesuits. They were in the habit of going to confession every week, without feeling the slightest trouble about their confessors, whose ignorance they kindly regretted.
Martyrs will be needed and persecutors will exist till the world is Christian. How did the three confessors meet this rumble of thunder about their ears? The quiet determination of their reply is very striking and beautiful. It is perfectly loyal, and perfectly unshaken.
See Life, ch. xxv. sections 18, 22. Relation II. To One of Her Confessors, from the House of Dona Luisa de la Cerda, in 1562. Jesus. I think it is more than a year since this was written; God has all this time protected me with His hand, so that I have not become worse; on the contrary, I see a great change for the better in all I have to say: may He be praised for it all!