Page:Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (Truslove & Bray).djvu/30

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HE 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 by 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 when I went to the Church to be confirmed with a number of others, I suffered extremely from the reproaches of my conscience. 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 of my forehead; these would be a sign by which the devils would know me, and would torment me the worse for them. I was thinking of all this, while I was sitting in the pew, waiting to receive the oil. I felt however some consolation, when my sins came to my mind; which I derived from another doctrine of the church, viz., that a bishop could absolve me from all sins any minute before my death; and I intended to confess them all before leaving the world.