ance can hardly be forgotten. On either side come alternate voices, as it were from heaven and from hell. First comes the confession of a sinner black as night; next the confession of a child in baptismal innocence; after that a penitent truly contrite, followed by a soul ignorant of itself and of its sinfulness; then come the poor, simple and single of heart; after them worldlings, intriguers, and evident liars. All the treatises of the Salmanticenses cannot teach a priest what his confessional is always teaching. If he has the humility to learn, it will teach him five great truths:
First, self-knowledge, by bringing things to his own remembrance, and by showing him his own face in a glass by the lives of sinners.
Secondly, contrition, in the sorrow of penitents who will not be consoled.
Thirdly, delicacy of conscience, in the innocent whose eye being single, and their whole body full of light, accuse themselves of omissions and deviations from the will of God, which we, perhaps, daily commit without discernment.
Fourthly, aspiration, by the fervent, whose one desire and effort, in the midst of burdened and restless homes, is to rise higher and higher in union with God.
