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 a faithful friend, what
is the value of that friend when he is bound by his functions and
fitted by his knowledge to devote to you all his care, under the seal
of the most inviolable secrecy?"

The third--Cardinal Newman--says, in "Anglican Difficulties":

"If there is a heavenly idea in the Catholic Church--looking at it
simply as an idea--surely, next after the Blessed Sacrament,
confession is such. And such is it ever found, in fact; the very act
of kneeling, the low and contrite voice, the sign of the
cross--hanging, so to say, over the head bowed low--and the words of
peace and blessing. Oh, what a soothing charm is there which the world
can neither give nor take away! Oh, what piercing heart-subduing
tranquility, provoking tears of joy, is poured almost substantially
and physically upon the soul--the oil of gladness, as Scripture calls
it--when the penitent at length rises, his God reconciled to him, his
sins rolled away for ever! This is confession as it is in fact, as
those bear witness to it who know it by experience."[62]

FOOTNOTES:

[56] Matt. xvi, 19, and xviii, 18.