Taking the book, I read slowly the article on the visitation of the sick: “Then shall the sick person be moved to make a special confession of his sins, if he feels his conscience troubled with any weighty matters. After which confession the priest shall absolve him, after this sort: ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left power to His Church to absolve all sinners who repent and believe in Him, of His great mercy forgive thee all thine offenses, and by His authority, committed to me, I absolve thee of all thy sins, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.’” I then added: “Now, my lord, where is the difference between the errors of Rome and your Church on this subject?”
“The difference is very great,” he answered. “The Church of Rome is constantly pressing the sinners to come to her priests all their lifetime, where we subject the sinner to this humiliation only once in his life, when he is near his last hour.”
“But, my lord, let me tell you that it seems to me the Church of Rome is much more logical and consistent in this than the Episcopal Church. Both churches believe and teach that they have received from Christ the power to forgive the sins of those who confess to their priests, and you think yourself wiser because you invite the sinner to confess and receive his pardon only when he is tied to a bed of suffering, at the last hour before his death. But will your lordship be kind enough to tell me when I am in danger of death. If I am constantly in danger of death, must you not, with the Church of Rome, induce me constantly to confess to your priests, and get my pardon and make my peace with God? Has our Saviour said anywhere that it was only for the dying, at the last extremity of life, that He gave the power to forgive my sins? Has He not warned me many times to be always ready; to have always our peace made with God, and not to wait till the last day, to the last hour?”
The noble bishop did not think fit to give me any other answer than these very words: “We all agree that this doctrine ought never to have been put in our Common Prayer Book. But you know that we are at work to revise that book, and we hope that this clause, with several others, will be taken away.”
“Then,” I answered, in a jocose way, “my lord, when this obnoxious clause has been removed from your Common Prayer Book, it will be time for me to have the honor of belonging to your great and noble Church.”
When the Church of England went out of the Church of Rome, she did as Rachel, the wife of Jacob, who left the house of her father, Laban, and took his gods with her. So the Episcopal Church of England, unfortunately, when she left Rome, concealed in the folds of her mantle some of the false gods of Rome; she kept to her bosom some vipers engendered in the marshes of the modern Sodom. These vipers, if not soon destroyed, will kill her. They are already eating up her vitals. They are covering her with most ugly and mortal wounds. They are rapidly taking away her life.
May the Holy Ghost rebaptize and purify that noble Church of England, that she may be worthy to march at the head of the armies of the Lord to the conquest of the world, under the banners of the great Captain of our Salvation.
Chapter XXX.
THE MURDERS AND THEFTS IN QUEBEC FROM 1835 TO 1836—THE NIGHT EXCURSION WITH TWO THIEVES—THE RESTITUTION—THE DAWN OF LIGHT.
The three years which followed the cholera will be long remembered in Quebec for the number of audacious thefts and the murders which kept the whole population in constant terror. Almost every week, the public press had to give us the account of the robbery of the houses of some of our rich merchants, or old wealthy widows.