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Now let us draw attention to the following Ritualistic perversion. "St. James, v. 16, says: 'Confess, therefore, your sins one to another, and pray one for another, that you may be saved.' Here we have confession to man laid down as a condition to salvation."—Hints to Penitents, p. 79 ; and yet in the same work says p. 105, " Jesus is your Saviour, and His Blood ALONE cleanseth from all sin; but if you do sin, pray for a humble, contrite heart, and true repentance of a Godly sort," ... "and if you confess your sins, God is faithful and just to forgive you your sins and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness." Oh no, says the Anglican priest, we don't preach compulsory confession, only voluntary.* Humph! what a specious lie! For the St. James' quotation, p. 79, reads on from a quotation of the Koman teaching, i.e., the Poor Man's Catechism, by Rev. J. Mannock, p. 172: ance then is our only refuge, the only plank whereby we can escape perdition after the shipwreck of our conscience by sin; we must then have recourse to it or we are lost for ever!" and again in the Theological Catechism of the Jesuits there is the following:

"Pen

Q. "Is the confession of sins necessary to salvation? A. "Yes, if the sins are mortal; for as to those which are venial there is no obligation to confess them.”

Mortal sins at Rome are: "Pride, avarice, luxury, anger, gluttony, envy and idleness." Catéchisme Théologique des Jesuites, quoted in Mrs. SHERWOOD S Nun, pp. 93 and 91.

Mortal sins in the Anglican Church are: "Pride, covetousness, luxury, envy, gluttony, anger, and sloth."-Churchman's Guide to Faith and Piety, Part I., p. 13.

So that lust and all its concomitants and the vileness of its offspring,† together with lying (punished by God with death, ‡ but a mere venial sin as considered by the

*The Rev. W. T. M'Cormick also writes: "On Sunday last, one of my school teachers, who had been in the habit of attending another Ritualistic Church in this town, told me that when she wanted to go to Holy Communion her vicar refused to allow her to come until she first came to Confession."-Sussex Daily News, June 10th, 1890.

† Romans i. 21-32.

Rev. xxi. 8, and Acts v. 5 and 10.

priest*), and murder,† are all venial sins, and need not be confessed!! Will then any sensible person doubt but that Ritualism is a Jesuit hostelry, and a half-way house to Rome; and that the turpitude of the Confessional and the priest will for ever remain unknown and unconfessed? Therefore, with all this examination and heart-probing, it amounts to this, that the Devil causes one to sin once, but the priest by the necessity of recalling the sin, writing it out, and confessing it to him, causes one to sin three times ! Which then is the greater devil ? Can we not cry to God: "Where art Thou, O my Lord! that Thou, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, knowing the past, present, and the future, shouldst require me to thus sin four times when I deeply deplore my first fall! Four times to trouble thine angels to joy over my repentance, and four times to worry Thee with the repetition of my little venial faults and mortal sins when Thou already knowest them?" What, O Women, are we about to let the priest storm our citadel, to take from us our thoughts, to alienate us from our relatives, with their Confessionals and churchosophy? O Men, our protectors are ye sleeping and letting the priests rob you of your wives', mothers', daughters', and sisters' confidences? Are you going to allow the priest thus to insinuate himself into your homes, till nothing can be done, not only without his knowledge, but without his sanction? It may be hard for us to submit to your ruling at first, but we shall bless you for extricating us from their wiles when once our eyes are opened.

* Says the Romanist priest to the nun: "A lie told merely for the injury of another, for own interest only, or no purpose at all, he painted as a sin worthy of penance; but a lie for the good of the church or convent is meritorious and, of course, the telling of it a duty."-Maria Monk, p. 45:

Says the Ritualist in the Devout Life: "It is one thing to say an untruth once or twice through thoughtlessness in matters of small importance, and another to take pleasure in lying and to be addicted to this sin."-P. 40.

Perhaps the reader could find out where Christ draws a distinction between little and big sins, venial or mortal. God says the wages of sin is death. There is no distinction drawn at all.

† Rev. xxii. 15, and Gen. ix. 6.

To return to "experiences," the writer had three confessors, one in London, one in the north, and one at Brighton, and the period of practising Confession was from three to four years. Being principally a school-girl at the time, no prurient questions were ever asked, and the change of residence necessitating different confessors, none had time to know her disposition, but with the last confessor (who, she was told, had once been concerned in a scandal, but of which she did not know at the time, and who had been the vicar of her second confessor) some words which she innocently used were evidently differently construed, and there was an ominous silence ;—he seemed to wait for something more: it seemed a silent enquiry as it were, and nothing coming. he resumed his previous attitude. The teaching is, “the more pain and shame now, the greater reward and glory hereafter" (Pardon Through the Precious Blood, p. 32), and therefore the certainty of heaven is made conditional on wading through any amount of shame, and it is only the want of this certainty that induces persons to submit to the debasing, degrading, humiliating, soul and body-destroying, priestly power obtaining, so-called "God-ordained Holy Sacrament"!! Nay, as one who has felt its influence, no epithet can be too strong for so fiendish and devilish an invention !

"Many who bring these odious charges against the practice of Confession are good men, who, not having been to Confession themselves, cannot from their own experience feel the groundlessness of the calumnies heaped against it. Many, however, there are who, it is to be feared, deliver their testimony because 'to the impure nothing is pure.' Many of them are enraged because Confession has saved their victims from their clutches, and to declaim against Confession is to them a sort of revenge. They know full well that the first time any of them went to Confession many sins of impurity would have to be acknowledged; it is therefore a cry got up in self-defence. If they were all immaculate in this particular, not a quarter of this anxious clamour would be raised by them."-Hints to Penitents, pp. 72-73.

Ha! master priest, had you not better cry peccavi. What do the newspapers say of your sins against purity? I, woman as I am, and therefore peculiarly susceptible of the charge of immodesty, unflinchingly cry out on your Confessional, that in my opinion not one word written against it is half strong enough; that as to the result, he who runs

may read. I have been through it, and felt its humiliating influence, darkening and overshadowing one's life. I had no sins of impurity to confess and, therefore, I had no fear of it in that respect, and do not inveigh against it because I want to hide them; and as to the impurity of the Confessional, the quotations given and to be given, point so directly to what does take place, that I claim out of their own works to have proved the horrible incriminating and debasing influence of the Confessional, and that to "the impure nothing is pure," and therefore the priest revels in his filthy questions.

I challenge hundreds and thousands of my sister women to deny that, when the first act of devotion and religious ecstasy is over, and they are quiet at home, they feel that by that act of informing a man what their heart tells them should only be told to God, they become thoroughly cowed, heartbroken, good for nothing in this world, losing all self-respect, all independence, all modesty (at being close ed alone with a man, howbeit he represents God).* losing all chastity, if they have dealt with the sin of impurity, all womanly respect, wifehood and motherhood. They feel internally as if they cannot face their fellow sisters, for some one knows, besides God, of that last sin of theirs, perhaps a lie, perhaps flirting; and although the priest savs he is strictly bound to secrecy, it might get round, he is but human, and thus they are afraid to break with him and they throw themselves headlong into churchosophy, missions, and services to drown the canker at the heart The priest has got hold of that part or essence of human nature that comes from God, and should be His alone, viz., our mind and spirit, and once enthralled, there are few, absurd as it seems, who are bold enough to dare the power of the priesthood. Let no one think, because there is a revival in our churches, people are becoming more religious; not they; thinking people are becoming Atheists or Theists, and are discarding the Church, because they see through the priesthood and their wiles. It is more likely the revivalism in religion is because Ritualism with its Confessional is reaping and still

* Why should a man be necessary when Christ says, "Enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father, which is in secret."-St. Matt. vi. 6.

sowing a goodly crop of immorality, and their congregations know it and try to stifle their consciences by following the heathen, as exemplified by Christ's words in St. Matt. vi. 7 : "But when ye pray. use not vain repetitions as the heathen do; for they think they shall be heard for their much speaking."

The very text so often quoted, "Confess your sins one to another," refers to Matt. ix. 2, where Jesus forgave sins in his own person, and in Romans xiv. 11-12 it is written : As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God." It is to be supposed that when God inspired this no priest or confessional box was handy! There is one point made a great deal of by the Ritualist, viz., that their antagonists only fix upon the sin of impurity. As shown, they themselves consider it the sin of sins, so we only follow their example, who are the shepherds of our souls, and unquestionably as God made us, male and female, this vice is at the root of every other sin, and this impurity of mind and body, once introduced into a home and the soul familiarised with it through the Confessional, is in truth giving it up to the devil! How comes it a decent woman cannot walk London streets without, at the very least, being glared at by fast men; how is it she cannot enter a railway train without being followed in a peculiar manner by old men, or rather villains? Stamp out the vice, women of England, the remedy lies with you; dress modestly, act modestly, let fashion and society take their ways, be content to be perfect wives, mothers, and daughters; home first, home love, love to husband, love to children; train your children in the belief that purity of life is above all things; no husband-seeking, no "good catches," not "blood," not "money," but purity and integrity, no priestly interference, no Confessional, with its trivialities or prurient tales for the enslaving of your souls, and then, O Mothers, ye will rear a race of men and women fit to take their place in the world!

Now, Married Women, Mothers of daughters, ponder hereon, and the consequences. Half-a-dozen "fair penitents" confess a few sins of flirting, and you know you must confess truthfully, and all your sins; and then the