they meet with in their course. Confession, as Dr. Pusey remarks, was acknowledged to be a good thing by Latimer himself, who regretted that it had not been retained in England. In the reign of the fourteenth Louis, some Chinese, visiting the capital of France, and being informed of the use of the confessionals, which they saw in the churches, expressed a wish that such tribunals existed in their own country, in which self-accusation might anticipate the rigor of the law, and moral reform take the place of punishment. Rousseau, Voltaire, and a host of others, have acknowledged the powerful restraint which confession places on the passions of youth, and the fruits of restitution and good works which it produces. The advantages to society arising from the confessional as a means of enforcing the reparation of wrongs can scarcely be estimated. It is properly the judgment-seat, where the culprit, acknowledging his guilt, escapes the penalties of the law, on conditions which combine mercy and justice. The promises of pardon held forth in the divine writings may easily be mistaken by our self-love for unreserved indulgence; but the example of Zaccheus should convince us that reparation of frauds is necessary. In vain do we profess sorrow for injustice, if we be unwilling to repair it. Few, nevertheless, offer at once, like the publican, to restore fourfold; whilst many are most unwilling to part with any portion of their unjust acquisitions. It was consonant with divine wisdom to refer us to the judgment of a disinterested person, instructed in the law of God, and uninfluenced by the false maxims which prevail among worldlings. The confessor is charged with the guardianship of the rights of all, and is bound to enjoin satisfaction for all wrongs which the penitent may have committed. His office empowers him to bind, as well as loose; and he must fearlessly declare to the penitent the necessity of restoring property and character, if either has suffered from his misdeeds. This surely is a most important portion of the sacerdotal duty, and well calculated to commend it to the admiration of all. Without any possible interest, the confessor acts as if he were the hired agent of the injured individual, who is generally unknown to him, and who may be an enemy of himself or his religion. Penitents left to their own judgment generally neglect the discharge of obligations of this kind. We see men notorious for injustice, who profess religion, without caring to atone for the many frauds by which they have amassed wealth; whilst very rarely is an instance presented of restitution made by any one who has not approached the confessional. The case reported in the Catholic Question regarded stolen property restored through the agency of Rev. Anthony Kohlmann, S. J., who was called on to declare the individual. Mr. Sampson, one of his counsel, eloquently portrayed on this occasion the advantages of confession, many of which are necessarily unknown. "Its utility," he said, "can never be proved by instances, because it cannot be shown how many have been saved by it; how many of the young of both sexes have been, in the most critical juncture of their lives, admonished from the commission of some fatal crime, that would have brought the parents' hoary hairs with sorrow to the grave. These are secrets that cannot be revealed. Since, however, the paths that lead to vice are many and alluring, is it not well that some one should be open to the repenting sinner, where the fear of punishment and of the world's scorn may not deter the yet wavering convert? If the road to destruction is easy and smooth, facilis descensus averni, may it not consist with wisdom and policy, that there be one silent, secret path, where the doubting penitent may be invited to turn aside, and escape the throng that hurries him along, some retreat, where, as in the bosom of a holy hermit, within the shade of innocence and peace, the pilgrim of this checkered life may draw new inspirations of virtue and repose? If the thousand ways of error are tricked with flowers, is it so wrong that somewhere there should be a sure and gentle friend, who has no interest to betray, no care but that of ministering to the incipient cure? The siren songs and blandishments of pleasure may lead the young and tender heart astray, and the repulsive frown of stern authority forbid return. One step then gained or lost is victory or death. Let me, then, ask you that are parents," (the advocate addresses the jurors,) which would you prefer, that the child of your hopes should pursue the course of ruin, and continue with the companions of debauch and crime, or turn to the confessional, where, if compunction could once bring him, one gentle word, one well-timed admonition, one friendly turn by the hand, might save your child from ruin, and your heart from unavailing sorrow? And if the hardened sinner, the murderer, the robber, or conspirator, can once be brought to bow his stubborn spirit, and kneel before his frail fellow-man, invite him to pronounce a penance suited to his crimes, and seek salvation through a full repentance, there is more gained than by the bloodiest spectacle of terror; than though his mangled limbs were broken on the wheel, his body gibbeted, or given to the fowls of the air."* As might have been anticipated from this eloquent appeal, but still more from the freedom of our institutions, the court held the priest exempt from answering the questions proposed to him. It was gratifying to Catholic feeling, that a guaranty was thus solemnly given to so sacred a trust. Had the decision been different, the venerable Jesuit father, rather than betray his ministry, would have doubtless gone to prison, like the Augustinian Gahan, who refused to manifest the nature of the communication which he had with Lord Dunboyne at his death, nay, he would have sacrificed life itself, like St. John of Nepomuck, who was assassinated by order of Wenceslas, king of Bohemia, because he would not reveal the confession of the queen. A word in regard to the nature of the secrecy of the confessional may be allowed us, before closing this article. It implies no more than the inviolability of the confidence reposed by the penitent in the confessor, who, under no circumstances, can reveal, to any one whatever, any sin disclosed to him in confession, or any circumstance manifested in connection with it, or make any use of the knowledge so obtained to the pain or prejudice of the penitent. There is no obligation on the penitent to declare his name, or the name of his accomplice, or to make any specifications, beyond the acknowledgment of his sins, so that he may preserve a perfect incognito; but if he be known to the confessor, he is nevertheless sure that his confidence will never be betrayed. It has puzzled us sometimes to understand a charge of immorality advanced by some against confessors on the score of this inviolable secrecy. They appear horrified at the principle laid down by St. Thomas, that a confessor, if summoned as a witness, may deny on oath all knowledge of facts known to him only on the confession of the penitent. Yet who does not know that evidence is sought for in courts of justice only as procured by ordinary means? The priest can testify fully, to the extent of any other witness, as to what he has seen, or what he has heard, in any way in which information can be had by others. It must be presumed that he is called on only as * Catholic Question, p. 89. an individual deriving information through channels open to all; and were the design of the court manifestly directed to discover sacramental secrets, it is so unjust that a refusal to comply would be a vindication of natural right to be true to confidence reposed in the witness, and a denial of all knowledge of the fact would be necessarily understood in a qualified sense, of knowledge such as a witness could possess. The iniquity of the attempt would put the hearers on their guard against the danger of mistaking the reply as extending to sacramental knowledge. The culprit, pleading "Not guilty," is not thought to utter a falsehood, since his denial receives a modified interpretation from the circumstances; the lawyer, denying all knowledge of transactions which his client communicated in confidence, is understood of ordinary information, such as he might communicate without detriment to official relations; and the ambassador, who professes not to know the secrets of his royal master, is not branded as a liar by those who are acquainted with the language of diplomacy. But it is time to relieve our readers from the consideration of a subject which, though of high importance, may not, as presented by us, have the attractions of many other topics of the day. ART. III.-An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. By JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. New York: Appleton & Co. 1845. 8vo. pp. 206. OUR readers do not need to be informed that the distinguished author of this work on the Development of Christian Doctrine, has, within the last year, been admitted to the communion of the Holy Catholic Church; for who has not heard of the event, and what Catholic heart has it not filled with devout joy and gratitude? Mr. Newman has stood for several years before the public as a man of rare gifts and acquirements; he was at the head of a very influential party in the Anglican communion, and appears to have enjoyed a personal esteem, and exerted a personal influence, which seldom fall to the lot of any but the master minds of their age or country. We may well, then, look upon his conversion with more than ordinary gratitude to the great Head of the Church, and as an event of more than ordinary significance. Mr. Newman appears, from all we know of his history, to have commenced his career with sincere attachment to the schismatical communion in which he was born and reared, and to have felt that he owed it all his genius, talents, attainments, labors, and affections; but almost from the first it was seen by close observers that he cherished aspirations and tendencies which, if faithfully followed, must ultimately lead him out of that communion, or destroy the communion itself by absorbing it in the Catholic Church. Hence the great importance which has been attached to his movements, and the lively interest with which his various publications have been read. Some almost flattered themselves that he and his friends would so far Catholicize the Establishment as to render its restoration to Catholic unity feasible and certain; others, looking upon this as improbable, since it would find an insuperable obstacle in English politics, thought it more likely that his movement would end in his own individual conversion, and that of a considerable number of his friends and followers; others, again, among whom were we ourselves, thought it still more likely that he would stop short in his course, and make up his mind to live and die an Anglican. We felt, on reading the famous Tract 90, that the man who could write such a tract would never want ingenious reasons to justify to himself any course he might choose to adopt. But we did not take sufficiently into the account the difficulties of the position of one standing, like Mr. Newman, outside of the Church, nor make sufficient allowance for the dimness and indistinctness with which Catholic truth ordinarily at first dawns on the Protestant mind, and for the length of time it usually requires to ascertain how much of our past life we may retain, and how much we must give up, in order to place the several parts of our new belief in harmony with each other. We humbly and devoutly thank Almighty God that we were wrong; that we relied too little on the power of divine grace; and that, contrary to our expectations, Mr. Newman, and a large number of his friends, have already been permitted to enter that communion, out of which it is madness to suppose we can please God, or secure the salvation of our souls. We have no disposition to speculate on the probable effect of the recent conversions in England. It may be that Almighty God is about to visit, in the riches of his mercy, the deeply sinning land of our forefathers, and, for his own greater glory, to restore her, contrary to her deserts, to the bosom of Catholic unity. Appearances everywhere indicate that our good God is at |