how many, who, before the revolution, appeared perfectly contented in their cloistral slavery, overcame every religious fear, and flew to the arms of a husband, as soon as they could do it with impunity. Two hundred and ten nuns were secularized in Spain during the short-lived reign of the Cortes *. Were these helpless beings happy in their former durance? What an appalling number of less fortunate victims might not be made out by averaging, in the same proportion, the millions of females who, since the establishment of convents, have surrendered their liberty into the hands of Rome! Cruel and barbarous, indeed, must be the bigotry or the policy which, rather than yield on a point of discipline, sees with indifference even the chance, not to say the existence, of such evils. To place the most sensitive, innocent, and ardent minds under the most horrible apprehensions of spiritual and temporal punishment, without the clearest necessity; is a refinement of cruelty which has few examples among civilized nations. Yet the scandal of defection is guarded against by fears that would * Report of the minister Garelli, laid before the Cortes, 1st of March, 1822. crush stouter hearts, and distract less vivid imaginations, than those of timid and sensitive females. Even a temporary leave to quit the convent for the restoration of decaying health is seldom given, and never applied for, but by such nuns as unhappiness drives into a disregard of public opinion. I saw my eldest sister, at the age of two-andtwenty, slowly sink into the grave within the walls of a convent; whereas, had she not been a slave to that church which has been a curse to me, air, amusement, and exercise might have saved her. I saw her on her deathbed. I obtained that melancholy sight at the risk of bursting my heart, when, in my capacity of priest, and at her own request, I heard her last confession. Ah! when shall I forget the mortal agony with which, not to disturb the dying moments of that truly angelic being, I suppressed my gushing tears in her presence; the choking sensation with which I forced the words of absolution through my convulsed lips; the faltering steps with which I left the convent alone, making the solitary street where it stood, re-echo the sobs I could no longer contain ! I saw my dear sister no more; but another was left me, if not equal in talents to the eldest (for I have known few that could be considered her equals), amiable and good in no inferior degree. To her I looked up as a companion for life. But she had a heart open to every noble impression— and such, among Catholics, are apt to be misled from the path of practical usefulness, into the wilderness of visionary perfection. At the age of twenty she left an infirm mother to the care of servants and strangers, and shut herself up in a convent, where she was not allowed to see even the nearest relations. With a delicate frame, requiring every indulgence to support it in health, she embraced a rule which denied her the comforts of the lowest class of society. A coarse woollen frock fretted her skin; her feet had no covering but that of shoes open at the toes, that they might expose them to the cold of a brick floor; a couch of bare planks was her bed, and an unfurnished cell her dwelling. Disease soon filled her conscience with fears; and I had often to endure the torture of witnessing her agonies at the confessional. I left L ་ her, when I quitted Spain, dying much too slowly for her only chance of relief, I wept bitterly for her loss two years after; yet I could not be so cruel as to wish her alive. LETTER VI. Rome the enemy of mental improvement: the direct tendency of her Prayer-book, the Breviary, to cherish credulity and adulterate Christian virtue. I COULD not connect the subject of my preceding Letter with any other, without doing the greatest violence to the overpowering feelings which the recollection of celibacy and monachism never fail to raise in me. I now proceed to show the natural opposition which exists between the spiritual power assumed by the church of Rome, and the improvement of the human understanding. After this I shall close my subject with numerous proofs of her disregard of truth, in the dissemination of a timid, superstitious, and credulous spirit, -the best security of her influence among mankind. The long list of illustrious writers, members of the Roman Catholic communion, with which the first part of my charge will be met, is well known I would allow that list to be doubled: I to me. |