ance is the bestowal of actual
medicinal graces, whereby the soul is strengthened against relapsing,
and for which reason regular and frequent confession is so earnestly
encouraged.

5. To have a wise prudent spiritual adviser, to have an experienced
physician of the soul, to have a merciful but strict judge of moral
duty: is to have the greatest spiritual support on earth, even apart
from the superadded sacramental character of such a minister. It is
this blessed gift which the Catholic has in his legitimately-approved
and authorized confessor.

Prejudice or ignorance can alone construe such an inestimable
treasure, which brings peace of conscience and heavenly consolation,
into "making the priest the keeper of a man's conscience, and the
destroyer of man's spiritual liberty and of his responsibility to his
Creator."

How different are the opinions of thoughtful men, concerning this
Tribunal of Penance, will be seen from the following: One is a
Frenchman, who, unhappily, apostatized from the Catholic Church; the
second is a distinguished German philosopher, who lived and died a
Protestant; the third is one of the profoundest thinkers of our day,
who, born in the Episcopal Church in England, served her some forty
years, and then left her to enter the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman
Church.

The first of these--Voltaire--thus writes:

"The enemies of the Roman Church, who have assailed the salutary
institution of confession, appear to have removed the strongest
restraint which can be put upon secret crimes. The sages of antiquity
themselves felt the importance of it."[61]

The second--Leibnitz--in his "System of Theology" says:

"The institution of sacramental confession is assuredly worthy of the
divine wisdom, and, of all the doctrines of religion, it is the most
admirable and the most beautiful. It was admired by the Chinese and
the inhabitants of Japan. The necessity of confessing sin is
sufficient to preserve from it those who still preserve their modesty;
and yet, if any fail, confession consoles and restores them. I look on
a grave and prudent confessor as a great instrument of God for the
salvation of souls. His counsels regulate the sentiments, reprove
vices, remove occasions of sin, cause the restitution of ill-acquired
property, and the reparation of wrongs; clear up doubts, console under
afflictions--in fine, cure or relieve all the evils of the soul; and
as nothing in the world is more precious than