stated to the priest at whose feet the self-accuser kneels during the narration. This lasts, in individual cases, four or five days." Well may Mr. White urge that auricular confession is one of the most mischievous practices of the Romish Church. "It is directly calculated, in many cases, not only to check the healthy action of conscience, but to destroy it." He adds on this most important topic-which halting Protestants should well understand ere they expose themselves to dangers which will assuredly operate upon them as upon others

"I will not conceal the truth. Many, indeed, were the evils of which my subsequent unbelief in Christianity was the occasion; yet I firmly believe that, but for the buffettings of that peculiar storm, scarcely a remnant of the quick moral perception which God had naturally given my mind could have escaped destruction by the emaciating poison of confession. Like some wretched slaves, I should have been permanently worse from the custom of sinning and washing the sin by confession."

The result of these spiritual exercises-"when though tears flowed from his eyes, yet his natural taste revolted from that mixture of animal affection with spiritual matters which is of the very essence of enthusiasm -was to bind him to the Church for life. Another visit of two months to Cadiz caused him to return home more averse than ever to a clergyman's life. He spoke of his fears to his mother, who, he adds, "from that moment never raised her eyes to me without tears." This maternal affection prevailed: "father, mother, confessor, all loved me-all were concerned in the plot of securing me to the Church!" How deeply melancholy is all this! What lessons to others does it loudly teach!-for how could the issue be otherwise than a rugged path along which he would have to walk with bleeding feet to his grave! He thus enters his vehement protest against the forced celibacy of the clergy:—

"Were it consistent with delicacy to detail the effects of that terrible law, which not only enforces celibacy on the clergy, but forbids their recovering their liberty by resigning their office, it might be proved to a demonstration that wherever such a law does exist the standard of morality must suffer a certain debasement, even in the minds of those who might be held up as patterns of purity in their conduct. There is not, there cannot be, a Spaniard high or low, clergyman or layman, ignorant of the fact that the celibacy of the clergy must be kept up at a certain loss of virtue in the country."

He resided as fellow of a college about four years, exchanging severe study for the best Spanish society, which enabled him still further to see the evils of this law. "It is a melancholy fact that the very best Spanish society is full of snares for a

young clergyman. Nothing but settled, selfish, cold-hearted profligacy can save him from great misery and mental distress." He was ordained when twenty-five years of age, and elected rector of his college. In consideration of this rank the full exercise of the powers of the priesthood at the confessional were granted to him, which afforded him ample insight into the enormous evils of the conventual system. He had to listen to the narratives of nervous recluses, who scarcely deemed themselves safe from an insincere confession, when they had stated every thought, deed, and word, however innocent, which had occurred in the even tenor of their lives; or, to the really painful tales of hopeless misery. The direct tendency, he says, of their confinement is to produce lingering disease, and not unfrequently derangement. He adds-"The idea of a nunnery is most exalted, pure, and poetical, in a sermon or work divinity. The real nunnery is a byword for weakness of intellect, fretfulness, and childishness."

on

Some there were, of course, of good sense and models of fortitude. But he declares that, though in the course of his life he has come into contact with the human mind at various stages of debasement, yet "souls more polluted than some of the professed vestals of the Church of Rome never fell within my observation." "It is but justice (Mr. White proceeds to say), that the undisguised disclosure of this melancholy state, made to me by the wretched victims, convinced me that their moral condition would have been much superior, had not the tyranny of their Church been relentless. I say thus much, under the fear of alarming delicacy. But as the policy of Rome reckons on the very feelings of delicacy as a security against the publication of facts which would raise a formidable cry of indignation in countries not completely under the Pope's authority, I feel bound to bear witness, in this manner, to the horrible results to which that Church shows itself utterly indifferent."

We earnestly intreat the attention of English fathers, and mothers, and daughters, to this view of that fascinating object to certain minds a convent; and, lest it should be thought that Mr. White's private indignation gave too high a colouring to these facts, we subjoin the following note appended to it: "All this has been read in December, 1840, under a most severe illness, attended with the persuasion that my departure from life is very near. Under these circumstances it is my duty to declare that I exaggerate nothing.-J. B. W."

In giving such extracts as these we have a two-fold object in view: first, to bring forward such facts as may serve to warn others of the real character of the Romish Church; and,

secondly, to exhibit these events which must have aided in giving that imperceptible bias to Mr. White's mind which, we fully believe, influenced him afterwards in judging of Christianity itself.

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Mr. White soon after obtained an appointment in the Chapel Royal of St. Ferdinand, affording an honourable and comfortable subsistence, together with certain prospect of higher preferment. But the seeds sown began now to produce their fruit in his mind; for about this period he exchanged a sincere belief in the Roman Catholic creed for a total disbelief of Christianity. My rejection of Christianity (he says) was the necessary result of a free examination of that spurious but admirably contrived form in which I had received it." We altogether deny this conclusion. Not having access to the work in which the origin of this change is described, we can only speak in general terms; but we cannot fail to recognize some radical defect in the structure of a thinking and enquiring mind which could reach the enormous conclusion, that, because the Romish religion contains much falsehood, therefore Christianity is false. We recognize this faulty intellect in Mr. White's subsequent enquiries.

Soon after this change he made the acquaintance of two clergymen, both of whom were violently anti-Christian. The bitterest of these was a dignitary who possessed a secret library of prohibited books, to which he gave Mr. White free access. To these he applied himself with indefatigable industry, and without doubt this period of his life fixed the results which the subsequent public events did only develope with regard to him. It absolutely, he says, settled his lot in life; "and yet such sufferings would be trifling compared with that I was doomed to experience, when an unhappy attachment condemned me to love by stealth, and to dissemble feelings which, being innocent in themselves, an accursed superstition had poisoned and degraded. My circumstances and the state of Spanish society could not but involve me in courses which ended in remorse.' Here are important revelations of human weakness, which do not seem to us to be put upon a sound footing-he speaks of necessity for what no temptations could really justify.

We know but too well the lax way in which the world talks of such offences; but we cannot rate highly those moral perceptions which could decide thus of such a case. "I heartily thank God that I have faithfully performed every duty which the strictest morality could demand in consequence of that connection." Was there no possibility, under any circumstances of poverty even, of subsequent marriage? We must speak out thus: for after all, let the world say what it may in defence of its own indulgences, the miseries that almost always issue, on

one side at least, prove the violation of fundamental moral laws. There are two parties-the one may escape-but what becomes of the other? Let the merciful frequenter of the haunts of misery give the reply.

We are again arrested by another event to which already some allusion has been made, and to which again we refer, not only because it exercised much influence on Mr. White's plastic nature, but also on account of its public lessons. His sister had determined to take the veil: he saw the baseness of the machinery which effected her slavery. "Father her confessor, was one of those priests who sinned and did penance by rotation."-"To see him, therefore, the instrument of consigning his sister to a nunnery-where the rule of St. Francis was observed with the greatest strictness--where the nuns were not allowed a bed and were obliged to sleep on a few planks raised about a foot from the ground-where the use of linen near the body was forbidden-where the nuns wore coarse open sandals, through which the bare foot was exposed to cold and wet-where the nearest relatives were not allowed to see the face of the recluse, except on certain days," &c.—she died about six years afterwards! We have no doubt of the truth of our theory, that such scenes as these exerted an influence on Mr. White's almost morbid sensibilities, which gave a bias to his mind in its future judgments upon Christian Churches.

But we must hurry on circumstances conspired to reconcile his parents to his plan of quitting Spain: in fact, they feared heresy and its consequences. His own profession was now utterly intolerable; he could not wash off the odious mark, even if he had tried to do it with his blood;" and in this state of mind he embarked at Cadiz for England, where he arrived, without one definite prospect, March 3, 1810. Here he found friends whose kindness saved him much probable distress. Subsequently he set up a Spanish journal which, after occasioning him many troubles (was there ever an editor without troubles?), and taxing very heavily his nervous system, ended in his obtaining from Government a pension of 250l. a-year.

Notwithstanding the labour of six hours daily entailed upon him by this journal, he eagerly pursued general knowledge, particularly the English language and Greek. To this he added the more important one of the Christian religion. And here at once we catch glimpses of that doubting mental tendency which ultimately led him downwards to depths in which, if he could swim, millions would utterly perish. He begins to assert the supremacy of reason by putting forth such sentiments as these

"I scarcely know a more grievous and general evil than the established habit of making inferences for others, and asserting that, by doubting or denying certain portions of the common systems, every man must doubt or deny the vital truths of Christianity. The general tendency could not exist, if men could as freely express their notions and sentiments on religion as upon other subjects."

There are fundamental errors involved in this mode of speaking which we cannot stop to point out, but the fact is not true; for men can and do speak out their sentiments, and the general consequences are the immoral infidelity which poisons so much of society. Where one like Mr. White rejects "common systems," through the love of abstract truth, thousands are proved to reject them, as Christ said they would-" Because they love darkness rather than light, their deeds being evil." Again he says "This character breaks out in every thing I have written-1 must come and see"-that is, faith is to be rejected and reason is to rule supreme. But the very form in which Mr. White chose to express this might almost appear designed to contradict the maxim of Christ" Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed."

But we proceed with the narrative. We saw Mr. White landing in England, an unbeliever in Christianity. His studies again restored his belief; and, in accordance with this change, he commenced a residence at Oxford, solely for the purpose of perfecting his knowledge of Greek and extending that of divinity. Here he renewed his studies in good earnest, but his constitution was broken; and the distressing complaint which ever since had deprived him of comfort and strength, and at times made life a burden, was rapidly gaining ground. He struggled vigorously against it, "but his days were miserable and his nights wretched!" This plan was broken up by his accepting the tutorship of Lord Holland's son, which he retained for two years during much suffering. After quitting Holland House, we find him seeking the comforts of home in different places, until he is again settled at Oxford. Here the university complimented him with the degree of M.A., and here he wrote that piece of autobiography which has hitherto been our guide.

The next source of our information is obtained from a remarkably interesting document which is termed "A Sketch of his Mind in England.” It was begun November 7, 1834, and ended August 8, 1839. In this he professes to give an account of the "intellectual workings of a man who has loved truth above all things." Here at once occurs a startling extract from a former journal-"when I made open profession of atheism." We suggest whether the mind which could ever be