, to
whom the Lord had given the power of performing miracles. She besought her
master to consult the prophet. Naaman, accordingly, set out for the
country of Israel and begged Eliseus to heal him. The prophet told him to
go and wash seven times in the Jordan; but Naaman, instead of doing as he
was directed, became very angry, and said: "I thought he would have come
out to me, ... and touched with his hand the place of the leprosy, and
healed me. Are not the Abana and the Pharfar rivers of Damascus, better
than all the waters of Israel, that I may wash in them, and be made
clean?"(464) But the servants of Naaman remonstrated with him, and
besought him to comply with the prophet's injunction, telling him that the
conditions were easy and the Jordan was at hand. Naaman went and washed
and was cleansed. Our opponents, like Naaman, cry out: "Why should you go
to a Priest, a sinner like yourself, when secretly, in your own room, you
can approach God, the pure fountain of grace, to be washed from your
sins?" I answer, because Jesus Christ, a prophet, and more than a prophet,
has commanded you to do so.

The last charge that I will notice is the most serious and the most
offensive. We are told that private confession is lawless; that the
conscience soon becomes "enfeebled and chained and starved" by it, and,
worse and worse, that sins are more readily committed, if followed by an
absolution conveying pardon--in other words, that the more attached
Catholics are to the practice of their holy religion the more depraved and
corrupt they become. Or, if they remain faithful to God, this is not by
reason of, but in spite of, their religious exercises.

Surely, this was not the sentiment of the late Dr. Ives, once Protestant
Bishop of North Carolina, and of many other illustrious converts, who,
from the day of their conversion to the hour of their death never failed
to receive consolation and strength from the sacred tribunal.

Nor is it the sentiment of Rev. Father Lyman, a Catholic Priest, of
Baltimore, and brother of the assistant Protestant Bishop of North
Carolina, nor of the present Archbishops of Baltimore and Philadelphia, of
the Bishops of Wilmington, Cleveland, Columbus and Ogdensburg, and a host
of others, both of the Protestant clergy and laity, who within the last
fifty years have entered the Catholic Church.

If we compare the Protestant and Catholic systems for the forgiveness of
sins, the Catholic system will not su