an intrigue with a deacon, bishop Necterius, and his successor Chrysostom, granted communion without confession.  It was not until the seventh century that the abbots of convents exacted from monks and nuns confession twice a year; and it was at a still later period that bishops of Rome generalized it.

The Mussulmen, who suppose women to have no souls, are shocked at the idea of confession; and say; How can an honest man think of listening to the recital of the actions or the secret thoughts of a woman?  May we not also ask, on the other hand, how can an honest woman consent to reveal them?

Thus by mutual reproaches the doctors of the different sects began to reveal all the crimes of their ministry—­all the vices of their craft; and it was found that among all nations the spirit of the priesthood, their system of conduct, their actions their morals, were absolutely the same: 

That they had everywhere formed secret associations and corporations at enmity with the rest of society:*

* That we may understand the general feelings of priests respecting the rest of mankind, whom they always call by the name of the people, let us hear one of the doctors of the church.  “The people,” says Bishop Synnesius, in Calvit. page 315, “are desirous of being deceived, we cannot act otherwise respecting them.  The case was similar with the ancient priests of Egypt, and for this reason they shut themselves up in their temples, and there composed their mysteries, out of the reach of the eye of the people.”  And forgetting what he has before just said, he adds:  “for had the people been in the secret they might have been offended at the deception played upon them.  In the mean time how is it possible to conduct one’s self otherwise with the people so long as they are people?  For my own part, to myself I shall always be a philosopher, but in dealing with the mass of mankind, I shall be a priest.”

“A little jargon,” says Geogory Nazianzen to St. Jerome (Hieron. ad.  Nep.) “is all that is necessary to impose on the people.  The less they comprehend, the more they admire.  Our forefathers and doctors of the church have often said, not what they thought, but what circumstances and necessity dictated to them.”

     “We endeavor,” says Sanchoniaton, “to excite admiration by
     means of the marvellous.” (Proep.  Evang. lib. 3.)

Such was the conduct of all the priests of antiquity, and is still that of the Bramins and Lamas who are the exact counterpart of the Egyptian priests.  Such was the practice of the Jesuits, who marched with hasty strides in the same career.  It is useless to point out the whole depravity of such a doctrine.  In general every association which has mystery for its basis, or an oath of secrecy, is a league of robbers against society, a league divided in its very bosom into knaves and dupes, or in other