received on the Subject.


The day on which I received confirmation was a distressing one to me. I
believed the doctrine of the Roman Catholics, and according to them I
was guilty of three mortal sins; concealing something at confession,
sacrilege, in putting the body of Christ in the sacrament under my feet,
and receiving it while not in a state of grace; and now, I had been led
into all those sins in consequence of my marriage, which I never had
acknowledged, as it would cut me off from being admitted as a nun.

On the day, therefore, when I went to the church to be confirmed, with a
number of others, I suffered extremely from the reproaches of my
conscience. I knew, at least I believed, as I had been told, that a
person who had been anointed with the holy oil of confirmation on the
forehead, and dying in the state in which I was, would go down to hell,
and in the place where the oil had been rubbed, the names of my sins
would blaze out on my forehead; these would be a sign by which the
devils would know me; and they would torment me the worse for them. I
was thinking of all this, while I sat in the pew, waiting to receive the
oil. I felt, however, some consolation, as I often did afterward when my
sins came to mind; and this consolation I derived from another doctrine
of the same church: viz. that a bishop could absolve me from all these
sins any minute before my death; and I intended to confess them all to a
bishop before leaving the world. At length, the moment for administering
the "sacrament" arrived, and a bell was rung. Those who had come to be
confirmed had brought tickets from their confessors, and these were
thrown into a hat, carried around by a priest who in turn handed each to
the bishop, by which he learnt the name of each of us, and applied a
little of the oil to our foreheads. This was immediately rubbed off by a