THE BROKEN OATH.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER.

SIR-I offer you the following narrative, illustrative of the consequences attendant on confession and absolution, as practised amongst our Roman Catholic countrymen. To any one acquainted with Ireland, it is but too evident, that there exists some deterriorating power at work amongst the people, weakening the sanctions of God's moral code, and lowering the standard of conscientious accountability. This story, founded on facts, that came within the range of my own observation, may serve in some measure to develope one of the sources of our country's evils.

WILTON.

Henry Lacy was one of those men, who, gifted with strong natural talents, want nothing but education and encouragement to raise them to intellectual eminence. His education and his principles, however, were neglected in his youth, and the consequence was, that the energy of his intellect, instead of being exerted to elevate his character, was directed into the grosser channel of his passions: so that he, who, under the early force of moral and religious influence, might have become a noble pattern of all that exalts the man, and adorns the Christian, was degraded by the demoralizing effects of the system under which he lived, to the melancholy standard of an eccentric pre-eminence in guilt. This view of Lacy's character is not taken, altogether, as it related to society; for he stood high in the opinion of all who knew him, even to the last: but it is taken as he himself, under deep impressions of sorrow, delineated it, that is, as he stood related to his God.

Lacy's father was a respectable and wealthy farmer; but being illiterate himself, he was consequently incapable of perceiving the bent of his son's mind, or of appreciating the advantages of a liberal or a religious education: Henry, therefore, grew up under such weak restraints as his father's imperfect and ineffectual system of morals laid upon him. For instance, when about seven years of age, he was sent to "his duties;" that is, to confess his sins, and receive the sacrament. He was, thenceforward, trained up in the practice of such devotions as the Church of Rome prescribes to her votaries; and as these always gain a strong dominion over the habit, without impressing the heart or restraining the principle, Henry, at the age of twelve, was a strange mixture of the mischief-making wag and the grave devotee. He thought his priest the most powerful and important personage on the earth, with the exception of the bishop, who, again, was only inferior to the Pope, who was only inferior to God. Neither had he any doubt, no more than his father before him, that a priest could, at any time, transform a Protestant clergyman into an ass, or a layman of the same Church into a goat, or sink either of them, or both, up to the chin in the earth, by a single word. He was, however, from his infancy amiable in the highest degree,

candid, generous, and humane; but credulous, easily excited, and impetuous. At school (for I was his school-fellow) I remember his magnanimity, when under the tyranny of a savage master, he would stand firm and unbending, to receive the chastisement which was due to another, when neither the motion of a muscle, nor the appearance of a tear was evident. And many a time have I seen him with a glow of feeling upon his youthful cheek, which would not disgrace the brow of an old Roman, strip his little jacket, and advance to chastise the insolence of him whose ungenerous arm had wantonly insulted the weak and the unoffending. Yet, although never known to shed a tear under the stern hand of correction, the voice of kind and affectionate remonstrance would melt him at once: and well do I remember, when to a kinder spirit, who succeeded the tyrannical pedant of the village, he went over one day, to the astonishment of the whole school, extended his little hand, and with tears in his eyes, exclaimed, "there Sir-there, I pledge my hand and word, that while in your school, I shall not again commit such a fault as I have been guilty of this day." Neither did he; the pledge was sacred. While advancing to manhood, without departing from the ac curate observance of his religious duties, he betrayed those occasional bursts of passion, and loose habits of life, which, to a youth having his notions of morality, were perfectly compatible with a consciousness of his internal advances in religion. He never neglected mass of a Sunday; but he was sure to attend a dance or a patron on the evening of the same day; and if he joined in the family rosary at night, he considered the day well spent. If he became intoxicated in fair or market, or involved himself in a quarrel, he would not permit a week to pass without confessing for it, and receiving the sacrament with an intention of never repeating the same crime. But he was in the hey-day of his youth, and though his intentions were good, he was not always able to resist the temptation. Still, however, every gross breach of moral duty was attended with strong sorrow, and a determined plan of amendment; but in making these determinations, he relied only upon the natural strength of his own resolution. He was told that such resolutions, if fulfilled, had their merit in the sight of God; and he very naturally concluded, that both the resolution and its fulfilment should proceed exclusively from himself, in order to come within the scope of the doctrine laid down to him. This then was a barrier between himself and his Redeemer, through whom alone he could expect that divine influence, without which, all human resolutions are, when exposed to temptation, like wax before the fire. "If my good works have merit," he would say, they must be my own-they must proceed from myself, independent of any other assistance; or if I am aided by divine help, then the work is surely not mine, but his who enables me to perform it. I must, therefore, perform it by my own unassisted effort, otherwise it has no merit; but that it has merit, and that it is effectual, the Church declares; and the Church being the pillar and ground of truth, cannot err." By this method of reasoning his dependance on God was weakened,

if not destroyed; for he was led to suppose himself capable of every effort by which sin may be resisted and every succeeding failure in resisting it he attributed to his own want of proper firmness; but by no means to his own natural inability and corruption of heart. His despondence, therefore, after crime, was proportionably gloomy and self-accusing; but his strength was not greater, and his relapses he considered as the guilt of a man who might, without relation to any other power, have entirely avoided them. Such was the effect which his aiming at merit in the sight of God, by the performance of devotional works, had upon him : for, that man's chief strength, next to the grace of God, is placed in the knowledge of his own weakness, was a circumstance which poor Lacy knew not until the eleventh hour.

In fact, Lacy's arguments were correct and plausible, but his premises were bad; and the evil of his first principles was concealed by that dogma, which, by stamping error with the impress of authority, prevents the individual under its influence from doubting it at all. In other words, like every one in similar circumstances, he considered the doctrines of his Church as infallible; and, therefore, laid them down as axioms not to be disputed. His reason, however, was clear and his perceptions acute, and their exercise upon principles, whose error had he been permitted to doubt, he would at once have detected, only led him into specious and impracticable speculations, which the guilt of his own nature, and the failure of his best resolutions refuted from day to day. The fact is, the corruption of his heart belied the speculations of his head: then he witnessed the most retiring and unaffected piety and benevolence in many who differed from him in religious opinion; yet he felt himself bound to believe, that they should, without exception, be condemned to eternal torments, for the accidental circumstance of being born out of the pale of the Romish Church. The man was benevolent, and considerations of this nature drew him into a labyrinth, from which he could only extricate himself by stifling the voice of reason, and restraining the impartial exercise of his judgment, that he might bow to the authority of his Church. These reflections were frequent, for Lacy's mind was active: but although he never failed to flatter himself, that the authority of that Church had settled them to his own satisfaction; yet in reality, his principles became gradually, but imperceptibly, unsettled, his character, at times silent and gloomy, and his heart dissatisfied and anxious.

During his progress to manhood, his connexion with young men of his own age became more extended. His education, it is true, was slight, but his natural superiority of mind, his great memory, his unstudied, and yet not ungraceful eloquence, hist readiness at repartee, and his caustic humour, were felt and acknowledged by all who knew him. His mind was naturally elevated, but his agricultural pursuits threw it into contact with more vulgar and grovelling spirits; and it was impossible that this communion should not degrade him to a lowness of thought, and a vulgarity of opinion on those subjects which most influence young men in his situation of life.

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When he was about twenty, his father gave him a farm to manage on his own account. It was situated on a long sweep of upland that skirted the dark but graceful mountains that divide the counties of ; I remember well that this farm was proverbial for producing the best barley in the neighbourhood. Behind it lay a long deep glen, closely covered with all those trees which thrive best in such places, viz. the dwarf oak, holly, hazel, mountain ash, and sloethorn. This glen originated between two large mountainous hills, and by several windings swept down, till it lost itself in a sloping stretch of meadow, where a river wound its way through one of the finest portions of the habitable globe, as far as beauty of landscape and fertility of soil are considered. As soon as his first crop was produced here, he erected a private still-house in the most remote corner of this glen; but he determined, in the beginning, to run only the produce of his own farm. This he effected, in the first instance, with considerable profit; his barley was distilled, and his father expressed himself highly satisfied with the manner in which he managed his farm. But the human heart is a strange undefinable mystery: I have seen Henry Lacy sitting in that still-house of a Sabbath morning, reading from his manual the devotions of the day, after having sunk into the insensible slumbers of intoxication the preceding night. It was here he first contracted the habit of intoxication-it was here he first became initiated into the principles of Whiteboyism, and it was here, no, not exactly here-but while engaged in this work of distillation, that he first became a Scapularian, or a member of the order of the Blessed Virgin.

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What I am about to advance may appear startling; it is however a fact. In the Romish Church it is dangerous to be born with talent, because she possesses, in her ordinances, all the sublimity and magnificence of earthly pomp; and the man of strong imagination is as likely to be swayed by her dark and shadowy solemnities, as the weak mind is by those ceremonies, which it venerates, for no other reason, but because it cannot understand them. Lacy was an instance of this. He was at this time strictly attentive to the duties of religion, as they are called in his church ; that is, he attended mass as usual on Sundays and holidays went to confession, received the sacrament, fasted the stated number of Fridays, read the penitential psalms, as imposed upon him, with the greatest strictness. Nay, further; he might be seen on a Sunday in the chapel of his parish, in the centre of a large ring, teaching the catechism to those about him, or perhaps at the head of a train of devotees, instructing them in the performance of some choice and especial act of devotion. All this he went through with the most scrupulous exactness, at a time when darkness and perplexity, on religious subjects had thrown a sickly hue over his whole mind. It could not indeed be otherwise. His understanding was now getting ripe, and his general perceptions of right and wrong more clear. In proportion as he investigated, his principles became weaker, because his conclusions on moral and religious subjects were always less

satisfactory. This he felt not, because his fundamental principles of infallibility did not permit him to break the web in which he was entangled. But the injury he sustained was not altogether unfelt, and the only effect his mental morbidity on these subjects produced on him, was a double degree of attention to the prescribed formalities of his church.

He accordingly became, apparently, more speculatively devout, at the very moment when he was really receding from the obligations of moral and religious principle. Poor fellow! his disposition was amiable, but his passions strong, and his moral situation dangerous in the extreme.

For some years Lacy's life went on unmarked by any thing beyond what may be found in thousands holding the same principles, and guided by the same views. He was, it is true, considered devout; but had he not been punctual in attending the rites of his religion, he would have evinced very little to redeem his character from profligacy. Still, however, even his natural sense of right and wrong struggled strongly against the influence of his habits, his passions, and his circumstances. Frequently was he on the point of breaking the chain which bound him down to that curse of reason, infallibility; for he could not help being of opinion, that by ascribing merit to what he was inclined to think was, and ought to be, an original and imperative duty, he could scarcely, with justice, consider sin as a positive offence. "If the fulfilment of religious precepts," he would say, "be a duty, then can we be entitled to no merit for its performance: but if it be not a duty, then I do not see how its neglect can be a crime." "Would it be possible," he would inquire, "that religious precepts and immoral actions are, after all, nothing more than negations, assuming their characters from the necessities of society, and changing their names and degrees of guilt according to its conditions ?" "Are not actions which are criminal in one country virtuous in another? Is there any standard therefore amongst men, whereby we can fix the characters of virtue and vice, or ascertain their intrinsic merits? Where, then, is there a test for truth?" He would pass then from scepticism to revelationto the redemption—and although his view of these subjects was necessarily limited, still the strong and irrefragable force which even their simple and abstract consideration had on him, was such, that he could scarcely avoid admitting, that either many of the doctrines of his own Church went to falsify revelation, or that revelation, as far as he could comprehend its object, went to falsify many doctrines of his Church. In this dilemma, where was he to attach the error? To his Church, or to the Scriptures? It was a nice point, and a perplexing one to settle-but of the Scriptures he had seen no more than accidental extracts-they were remote he was not familiar with them-had not experienced their internal persuasion-nor known their harmony of doctrine— their pure morality, nor the powerful sense of future responsibility which they impress upon the soul. His Church, on the other hand, was his constant guide—with her he was more familiar-he felt her influence-he was the creature of her rites and 2 K

VOL. VI.