XVII

even this refuge;⁠—shall break through all their ceremony of slow chicane;⁠⸺⁠scorns the doubtful workings of secret plots and cautious trains to bring about his purpose:⁠⸺⁠See the barefaced villain, how he cheats, lies, perjures, robs, murders!⁠—Horrid!⁠—But indeed much better was not to be expected, in the present case⁠—the poor man was in the dark!⁠⸻his priest had got the keeping of his conscience;⁠⸺⁠and all he would let him know of it, was, That he must believe in the Pope;⁠—go to Mass;⁠—cross himself;⁠—tell his beads;⁠—be a good Catholic, and that this, in all conscience, was enough to carry him to heaven. What;⁠—if he perjures!⁠—Why;⁠—he had a mental reservation in it.⁠—But if he is so wicked and abandoned a wretch as you represent him;⁠—if he robs,⁠—if he stabs, will not conscience, on every such act, receive a wound itself?⁠—Aye,⁠—but the man has carried it to confession;⁠⸺⁠the wound digests there, and will do well enough, and in a short time be quite healed up by absolution. O Popery! what hast thou to answer for?⁠⸺⁠when, not content with the too many natural and fatal ways, thro’ which the heart of man is every day thus treacherous to itself above all things;⁠—thou hast wilfully set open the wide gate of deceit before the face of this unwary traveller, too apt, God knows, to go astray of himself; and confidently speak peace to himself, when there is no peace. > > “Of this the common instances which I have drawn out of life, are too notorious to require much evidence. If any man doubts the reality of them, or thinks it impossible for a man to be such a bubble to himself,⁠—I must refer him a moment to his own reflections, and will then venture to trust my appeal with his