AURICULAR CONFESSION AND POPISH NUNNERIES. BY WILLIAM HOGAN, ESQ., BARRISTER-AT-LAW; For Twenty-five Years a Confessing Priest. Grant them the rights of men, and while they cease Revised Edition, with an Appendix. NEW YORK THE TRUTH SEEKER COMPANY The first edition of the following work appeared in 1854. Since then the work met with a very extensive circulation both here and in England, and its success was well deserved. But the Jesuits were ever on the alert. What they could not effect by force or fraud— namely, the suppression of the work-they soon found means virtually to bring about by the ingenious and costly method of buying up all the copies they could find and that could be purchased or borrowed and lost. We know of one little village in which the twenty copies which had found admission there were soon reduced to one or two; and this, we are abundantly certified, was only a fair sample of the policy pursued towards this telling little volume wherever it appeared. Prefixed to the original edition are certificates of Mr. Hogan's abilities and character from eminent judges and members of the bar- testimonials of as intrinsic worth as any man could produce or any American citizen require, and entitling Mr. Hogan's statements to full credit in the estimation of every honest and impartial reader. -12-1-53 . Living wery The present revision means only a slight abbreviation of comments. It leaves all the facts untouched and as unassailable as ever. INTRODUCTION. The population of this world of ours is supposed to amount to 812,553,712.' Of this vast number, 137,000,000' are Roman Catholics, who now on the 19th July, 1845, bend the knee and bow down in homage to a weak, helpless, and worthless being, the Pope of Rome; and thus, if history does not deceive us, proving themselves conspirators against the happiness of the human race. To ameliorate the condition of this almost countless multitude of our fellow-creatures is among the first duties of every good man. No one is exempted from it; not the king nor the peasant; not the sage nor th philosopher; not the priest nor the layman; for there are as many modes of discharging this duty as there are grades in the social system. As a member of the human family, and being once an instructor myself, I feel that I have too long neglected this common duty. Many suns and many shades, too, have passed over me, without doing much in the great work of promoting the happiness of my 1 It is now (1878) variously estimated all the way from one billion, to one billion two hundred millions.-Ev. Now variously estimated (statistics are here mostly guess-work) at from one hundred and fifty to one hundred and eighty millions.-ED. |