till it flies into it, to its own destruction. Such seceders mourn and
dread the step; pray about it, think and think, till they are bewildered
and harassed; and then, in a fit of desperation, go off to some Romish
priest to be received. A man who had an honourable position, a work and
responsibility, suddenly becomes a nonentity, barely welcomed, and
certainly suspected.

Romish people compass sea and land to make proselytes; and after they
have gained them, they are afraid of them, for their respective
antecedents are so different, that it is impossible for them to think
together. They get the submission of a poor deluded pervert, but he gets
nothing in return from them but a fictitious salvation. They gain him;
but he was lost the kind regard and sympathy of friends he had before,
and with it all that once was dear to him; and he voluntarily forfeits
all this upon the bare self-assertion of a system which claims his
implicit obedience. The poor pervert is required to give over his will,
his conscience, and his deepest feelings to the keeping of his so-called
"priest" or to the Church, and is expected to go away unburdened and at
peace. Some there are, it is true, who actually declare that they have
peace by this means; but what peace it is, and of what kind, I know not.

Supposing that I was in debt and anxiety, and a man who had no money,
but plenty of assurance and brass, came to me and sympathized in my
trouble, saying, "Do not fear---trust me; I will bear your burden, and
pay off your debt"--if the manner of the man was sufficiently assuring,
it would lift up the cloud of anxiety and distress; but, for all that,
the penniless man would net, and could not, pay my debt. I might fancy
he had done so or would do so; and then, when it was too late, the debt,
with accumulated interest, would fall on me, to my over-whelming ruin,
even though I had been ever so free from anxiety before. So it is with
these deluded ones, who go to the priest instead of to Christ, and take
his absolution instead of Christ's forgiveness.

Any one who carefully reads the Word of God may see that the Church of
Rome has no such priesthood as she claims, nor power to forgive sins, as
she professes to do. The whole supposition is based on a
misunderstanding of the text, "Whose soever sins ye remit, they are
remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained"
(John 20:23).

The disciples (some of them not apostles) who recei