Con. Are you fond of any of them?
Pen. Why, yes; I like cousin A. or R. greatly.
Con. Did you ever like to sleep with him?
Pen. Oh, no.
Con. How long did these thoughts about men continue?
Pen. Not very long.
Con. Had you these thoughts by day, or by night?
Pen. By——!!!!!
In this strain does this reptile confessor proceed till his now half-gained prey is filled with ideas and thoughts, to which she has been hitherto a stranger. He tells her that she must come to-morrow again. She accordingly comes, and he gives another twist to the screw, which he has now firmly fixed upon the soul and body of his penitent. Day after day, week after week, and month after month does this hapless girl come to confession, until this wretch has worked up her passions to a tension almost snapping, and then becomes his easy prey. I cannot as I before stated, detail the whole process by which a Romish confessor debauches his victims in the confessional, but if curiosity, or any other motive creates in the public mind a desire to know all the particulars about it, I refer them to Antoine's Moral Theology, which I have read in the college of Maynooth, or to Den's treatise, "De Peccatis" which I have read in the same college, and in the same class with some of the Romish priests now in this country, hearing confessions perhaps at the moment I write, and debauching their penitents, aye even in New England, the land of the pilgrims! In those books I have mentioned, they will find the obscene questions which are put by priests and bishops of the Romish church, to all women, young and old, married or single; and if any married man, or father, or brother, will, after the perusal of these questions, allow his wife, his daughter, or his sister, ever again to go to confession, I will only say that his ideas of morality are more vague and loose than those of the heathen or the Turk. Christian he should not be called, who permits these deeds in our midst. I beg here to lay before my readers an extract from a work, recently published in Paris, entitled, "Auricular Confession and Direction." The work is written by M. Michelet, one of the most distinguished writers in France. It has been noticed in the last number of the Foreign Quarterly Review, and in that admirably conducted press, the Boston Courier.
The following is given as the mysterious opening of the book:!!!!!