Page:The spiritual venality of Rome.djvu/133

112 has recoiled £rom the unimpressible substance of popery, and left it in the grossness, as well as reality, of its own unchanged and unchangeable vitiosity. It is remarkable, and frightfully characteristic, that this little volume of 94 pages terminates with the recital of the constitution of Benedict XIV* De Denunciandis ConfessariiSy Pienitentes ad inhO' nesta Sf turpia solliciUintibus, kc. This is the last papal Constitution on the subject : but it is not the last recognition of it, nor the last unavailing eflfort to stem the profligacy, which is the joint result of compulsory celibacy in the Confessor, and compul* sory obligation to confess in all — or, on this sub- ject, the eompuUory system in the church of Borne. The tractate, in order to appear with all due authority, ends with the words Authenticitatem testar^ and the autograph, Broussen, Secret.* It may not be amiss to add, by way of rather oddly circumstanced contrast, that i have a little piece entitled Begulae Ordinationes et Constitutiones Cancellariae Apostoliccc Sanctissimi D. N. D. Leonis Divina Frovidentia Papae XII. Bomse MDCccxxiii^ Typis Beverendae Cameree Apostolicse. The reader will fitnd nothing here to oticnci him in point of crime, or the description of it; except, indeed, the voracious cupidity, which all the Begulations breathe, may impress him with the feeling, that the lespecting iieserved Ca^es in X>enfi's Tiieology, vi, 261^—325^
 * The reader may sec a pjeat deal, instructive in one Knie^