people of alt ranks, and especially of the highest ranks, crowded
to the confessionals in the Jesuit temples; for from those
confessionals none went discontented away. There the priest was
all things to all men. He showed just so much rigour as might not
drive those who knelt at his spiritual tribunal to the Dominican
or the Franciscan church. If he had to deal with a mind truly
devout, he spoke in the saintly tones of the primitive fathers,
but with that very large part of mankind who have religion enough
to make them uneasy when they do wrong, and not religion enough
to keep them from doing wrong, he followed a very different
system. Since he could not reclaim them from guilt, it was his
business to save them from remorse. He had at his command an
immense dispensary of anodynes for wounded consciences. In the
books of casuistry which had been written by his brethren, and
printed with the approbation of his superiors, were to be found
doctrines consolatory to transgressors of every class. There the
bankrupt was taught how he might, without sin, secrete his goods
from his creditors. The servant was taught how he might, without
sin, run off with his master's plate. The pandar was assured that
a Christian man might innocently earn his living by carrying
letters and messages between married women and their gallants.
The high spirited and punctilious gentlemen of France were
gratified by a decision in favour of duelling. The Italians,
accustomed to darker and baser modes of vengeance, were glad to
learn that they might, without any crime, shoot at their enemies
from behind hedges. To deceit was given a license sufficient to
destroy the whole value of human contracts and of human
testimony. In truth, if society continued to hold together, if
life and property enjoyed any security, it was because common
sense and common humanity restrained men from doing what the