time by the successors of those, to whom he said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven." Oh, words! teeming with consolation to poor sinners; words! worthy of "the Lamb, who taketh away the sins of the world;" words! in fine, which no soul can appreciate, but she, whose sorrow and sincerity they have rewarded. Happy, thrice happy soul! Happy in her present change! happy in her future hope! happy, I had almost said, in her past delinquency! For, the thought of what she had lost, and what she has now regained, fills her with such sentiments, such raptures, of gratitude, of joy, of repentance, of fervor, and of love, as verify that admirable comment of the great St. Augustine upon the words of the Apostle, Rom. viii, 28, "To them that love God, all things work together unto good." "Yes;" says the holy Bishop, who was himself a living proof of his observation; Omnia-etiam peccata."All things work together unto their goodeven THEIR OWN SINS!"

Oh! ill-fated England! who hast lost the blessings of Confession! Well mayst thou curse the day, when thy Pretended Reformation closed the tribunal of repentance and comfort against thy luckless children. Seek not elsewhere the cause of thy daily, thy hourly suicides. Impute them not to the clime, with which thy God has blessed thee. Blaspheme not the gift of heaven. That clime is the same, in which thy Catholic generations calmly breathed their pious souls in death, 'ere felo de se had become thy almost national sin. Open,

open thy long-closed eyes, and see-whence came this most unnatural of thy crimes. Its cause; its sole, its undeniable, unquestionable, cause is the want of Confession. This, History has told thee; Nature tells thee.-The human mind, oppressed with grief or guilt, requires consolation; and consolation from without. It is not to itself self-sufficient. It stands in need of an adviser, a consoler, a friend, who enjoys its confidence; and the influence of this friend, to be effectual, to command confidence, must have something in it more than human. Otherwise, the deeply afflicted, the deeply guilty mind will not disclose its woes, its crimes. It will seek, vainly, it is true, but yet will seek, in self-destruction, an end to both. This is Nature. But, every impulse of nature finds its corrective in Christianity; for the God of Christianity is the God of Nature. Hence, has he instituted Confession; and to it has attached Absolution. Man would never confess, if he did not expect pardon: God never deceives man's natural and necessary expectation. Therefore hath he said to his ministers, Matt. xviii, 18, "Whatsoever you loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven."

Again Man would never confess his hidden crimes; and consequently, would be left without a competent adviser in these, the very worst of, his afflictions; if his confession were, against his will, to be communicated to a third person, and thus endanger, nay, destroy his own character, his connexions in society, and perhaps his life itself. Hence has the merciful and tender Parent of all society, who reserves to the

day of his own universal judgment, the disclo sure of all that is hidden; hence, I say, has he guarded the sanctuary of Confession with a seal of secrecy, so impenetrable, as to draw from the celebrated author of the Philosophical Catechism, quoted by the Rev. Mr. Gallitzin, the following remark:-"A thing well worth observing, and really supernatural and miraculous is the seal or secret of Confession, entrusted every day to thousands of Priests, some of whom, alas! ill qualified for their profession, and capable of any other prevarication, and yet so faithfully kept. Scarcely can ALL Church history, during a period of more than eighteen hundred years, furnish one example of infidelity in this point, even among those who, like Luther and Calvin, turned apostates to the Church. If any one reflects on the inconsistency of mankind, on the curiosity of some, and the loquacity and indiscretion of others, on the nature and importance of the affairs entrusted to Confessors, the revelation of which, would often have astonishing effects, on the means which various interests, avarice, jealousy, and other passions fail not to try, in order to compass their ends, &c. there will remain no doubt, but that God watches over the preservation of his work." Philos. Catechism, vol. 3, chap. vii, art. 1.

Thus, O England! nature, scripture, history and experience shew thee the necessity of Confession. Hadst thou preserved Confession, thou wouldst not have to lament the horrorstriking self-murders of so many of thy children of every age, sex, rank, and character; wealthy

and indigent; learned and unlearned; old and young; male and female; misers and prodigals; religionists and anti-religionists; men who have disgraced, and men who have adorned society; women of foul, and women of fair reputation; statesmen thwarted in their projects; merchants losing by their speculations; Judas's despairing of redemption; fanatics presuming to force their way into heaven; grieving husbands; abandoned wives; seduced maidens; life-loathing profligates; convicted criminals and even mimicking infants!-Oh! England! England! open once more to thy unhappy children the sanctuary of religious consolation-the sacred tribunal of Confession.-Oh! England! England return, return

The tomb shall hush my voice, or thou, obey;

'Ere my tongue cease its fond, its fervent lay"Return, O England! to the Lord, thy God."

Join, O my Catholic brethren, in this, my ardent, my unwearied prayer to the Redeemer of All-that a country, so long and so closely connected with us; so deserving of being called, in her Catholic times, the Sister-Island of the Isle of Saints; may again seek refuge in the saving Ark of her Mother Church; and, absolved, from her many abominations, in the consoling sanctuary of Confession, may begin once more to taste, in common with the great body of faithful Christians, the calm and sweet delights of that "LOVE OF GOD," which shall be the subject of my next discourse.

A blessing, &c.

;

THE ancient philosophers of the Pagan: world lost themselves in endless mazes of debate, concerning the summum bonum, or happiness of Man. A part of those sages, with Epicurus at their head, perceiving that virtue was often doomed to drink the cup of bitterness and of infamy, while vice rode triumphant in splendour, pleasures, wealth, and power, came to the absurd conclusion of denying, altogether, the existence of a Providence; and adopted that maxim, which has since borrowed its nam from their school; that Epicurean maxim, which still continues to form (if I may be allowed such an abuse of words) the moral and religious creed of those voluptuaries, "who are without God in this world ;' namely, "Let us eat; let us drink; for tomorrow we shall die." Shocked at such beastly and degrading doctrine, and struck