The sacraments of the church of Rome being considered necessary to spiritual life, and at the disposal of the priesthood, necessarily gave them enormous power. But none of its many sacraments tended to increase the influence of the priests, or to enslave and lower the morality of the people, more than auricular confession. From the Emperor to the peasant the whole heart of every man and woman belonging to the church of Rome was laid open to the priest. No act, scarcely a thought, at least in the dark ages, was kept a secret from the father confessor. To conceal or disguise the truth was a sin to be punished with the most humiliating penance, or, it might be, with the pains of hell forever. Before a power so arbitrary, so irresponsible, so dreaded, who did not tremble? The priests thus became a kind of spiritual police, to whom every man was bound to inform against himself. They knew the secrets of all persons, of all families, of all governments, of all societies, and, of course, how to rule and lay their plans so as to accomplish whatever they pleased. The conscience, the moral as well as the religious or spiritual being of man, were in their power. It was like the seal and consummation of all wickedness and blasphemy. Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, masters and servants, were all under their secret, but real, supervision and control.
The power thus gained in the confessional was exercised for the alleged good of the church—sometimes on granting, delaying, or refusing absolution, as the case might be. All depended on the ends to be gained by the church: the most selfish, cruel, and unprincipled use has often been made of information thus religiously given. We refer especially to the long protracted cases of dispute and discipline, which never could be settled until the church had gained the day. Excommunication was a real thing in those days, and the pope a real antagonist. When Hildebrand thundered a sentence of excommunication against Henry, released his subjects from their oath of fealty, and pronounced him deprived of his throne, he found it a vain thing to fight against the pope, though he was at that time the greatest sovereign in Europe. He was forced to yield; and in the most degraded condition, barefoot, and shivering with cold, he humbly supplicated the inexorable monk to remove the censure of the church, and reinstate him on his throne. The awful sentence of excommunication cut the offender off, whatever his rank or station, and as salvation was considered an utter impossibility beyond the pale of the Romish church, there was no hope for any one dying under this sentence. Even the body might be denied a resting-place in consecrated ground, but the soul would be the prey of demons forever.