round His banners; and let them fearlessly march, shoulder to
shoulder, on the doomed city: let all the trumpets of Israel be sounded
around its walls: let fervent prayers go to the throne of Mercy, from the
heart of every one for whom the Lamb has been slain: let such a unanimous
cry of indignation be heard, through the length and breadth of the land,
against that greatest and most monstrous imposture of modern times, that
the earth will tremble under the feet of the confessor, so that his very
knees will shake, and soon the walls of Jericho will fall, the confessional
will disappear, and its unspeakable pollutions will no more imperil the
very existance of society.

Then the multitudes who were kept captive will come to the Lamb, who will
make them pure with His blood and free with His word.

Then the redeemed nations will sing a song of joy: "Babylon, the great, the
mother of harlots and abominations of the earth, is fallen! fallen!"

* * * * *

CHAPTER VIII.

DOES AURICULAR CONFESSION BRING PEACE TO THE SOUL?

* * * * *

The connecting of Peace with Auricular Confession is surely the most cruel
sarcasm ever uttered in human language.

It would be less ridiculous and false to admire the calmness of the sea,
and the stillness of the atmosphere, when a furious storm raises the
foaming waves to the skies, than to speak of the Peace of the soul either
during or after the confession.

I know it; the confessors and their dupes chorus every tune by crying
"Peace, peace"! But the God of truth and holiness answers, "There is no
peace for the wicked!"

The fact is, that no human words can adequately express the anxieties of
the soul before confession, its unspeakable confusion in the act of
confessing, or its deadly terrors after confession.

Let those who have never drunk of the bitter waters which flow from the
confessional box, read the following plain and correct recital of my own
first experiences in auricular confession. They are nothing else than the
history of what nine tenths of the penitents[5] of Rome old and young are
subject to; and they will know what to think of that marvellous Peace about
which the Romanists, and their silly copyists, the Ritualists, have written
so many eloquent lies.

In the year 1819, my parents had sent me from Murray Bay (La Mal Baie)
where they lived, to an excellent school, at St. Thomas. I was then, about
ten ye