Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/232

242 the rite with great circumstance and much ceremony. Satan was conjured, many times, to “depart out of this young person, and to give God the glory;” he was especially conjured to depart out of every portion of her body, which was, with that, crossed and touched by the priest with the thumb, moistened first with saliva, then with holy oil. Eyes, ears, nostrils, forehead, mouth, shoulders, breast, back, and so on, were signed with the cross in this manner, to drive out Satan. Every thing which came in contact with the newly converted, even the salt which was laid upon her lips, underwent the same conjuration and blessing. This seemed to me petty and childish, though I acknowledge the importance of that which it symbolizes, namely—that true religion (according to the meaning of the Catholic church) will consecrate every thing in and around the human being, to God's service. The words of abjuration in which the young girl renounced the faith of her fathers, were remarkably forcible:

“I abhor and I renounce the errors and heresies in which I have been brought up, and which have separated me from the only sacred, saving Catholic church.”

She then vowed, according to the formula, that she would in the first place “believe in the infallibility of the Roman Catholic church, in the immaculate conception of the Virgin, in the worship of the saints, and the power of their intercessions; in the fire of purgatory, and, finally, in the Saviour Jesus Christ, and his eternally sufficing atonement for us with God.” “The true faith,” taught Monsignor L——, “consists in this: that we ought to worship in the Trinity a