EXCERPTS FROM THE LIFE OF JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE
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Perceiving the moment when terror was at the highest, he suddenly assumed a composed and almost familiar tone, assuring his hearers that under the present impressions of his mind, oppressed and sinking as it was under the idea of sin and its appropriate punishment, it was impossible for him to speak of hope, of mercy, of forgiveness. He must, therefore, dismiss his hearers abruptly, and leave them to their own thoughts. He then clapped his hands (the usual signal for departure), and retired into the vestry. As the congregation crossed the small quadrangle before the chapel, on their way to their rooms, you might think you saw forty or fifty prisoners who had received sentence of death a few moments before. Some held their hands before their eyes, and scarcely could keep themselves from crying aloud. Others looked down on the ground in the attitude of utter despair. All seemed absorbed in grief.
The scene was, however, very different in the evening. The reading, preparatory to Meditation, was of hope and mercy. The ejaculations opened in a tone of voice which soothed the heart, so lately harrowed with terror. A fresh flood of tears was now seen to flow from the eyes of the congregation; but they were tears of gratitude, of tenderness, of love. A mere reaction of feeling might easily account for this change; but this reaction was not left to chance. The very aspect of the chapel secured it.
It was not a gloomy vault, as before. There were wax candles upon the altar, amongst which a smiling picture of the Virgin Mary seemed to greet the distressed penitents as they came in. The Virgin was, indeed, the principal, the all-engrossing object that evening. It was through her that forgiveness was to be obtained: she was the Mother of Mercy she was all that language can express of love, compassion, and sympathy. The Director’s addresses to her, as the hour of Meditation was waning, were those of an enthusiastic lover wooing his sovereign princess. In the midst of these raptures, the sound of music was heard from a gallery at the furthest end of the chapel. Several Voices, accompanied by instruments of different kinds, sang the praises of the Virgin, the Refuge of Sinners (Refugium Peccatorum). At the same time, Father Vega rose from his kneeling posture, and, taking up the picture, presented it for a holy kiss to every one present. I fear I shall be suspected of an attempt to exaggerate but I have neither leisure nor inclination to write for effect. I state a mere fact, when I assure you that the music was generally drowned in the convulsive cries of the congregation.
This was the appointed time to begin the General Confessions. That name is likely to lead Protestants into a mistake for it means, not a general acknowledgment of sinfulness, but a detailed account of the previous life of the person who is to make the general confession. Every thought, word, and deed, nay, every doubt, every uncertainty of conscience that can be called to remembrance, must be stated to the Priest, at whose feet the self-accuser kneels during the long narrative. I say long, because the result of such a process of examination, as is carried on for four or five days, by the penitent himself, under the impression that any negligence on his part must involve him in guilt far exceeding that of all his former misdeeds, produces (in the sincere and sensitive) a morbid anxiety of which none but those who have experienced it can form an adequate notion.
I will not stop to urge the grounds of a conviction, on which I have enlarged elsewhere— that auricular confession is one of the most mischievous practices of the Romanist Church. To those who are not totally ignorant of the philosophy of morals, it must be clear that such minute attention to individual faults—not to trace them to their source in the heart, but in order to ascertain whether they are venial or mortal sins, according to the judgment of another man—must, in an infinite number of cases, check the development of conscience, and may totally destroy it in many. As far as my experience extends, (and I have had fair opportunities of observing the effects of Romanism in myself, and in many others,) the evils of auricular confession increase in proportion to the sincerity with which it is practised.
I know that what I am going to say will sound extremely harsh and startling to many. But I will not conceal or disguise the truth. Many, indeed, were the evils of which my subsequent period of disbelief in Christianity (a disbelief full of spite for the evils inflicted upon me in its name) was the occasion; yet I firmly believe that, but for the buffetings of that perilous storm, scarcely a remnant of the quick moral perception which God had naturally given to my mind would have escaped destruction by the emaciating poison of confession. I judge from the certain knowledge of the secret conduct of many members of the clergy, who were deemed patterns of devotion. Like those wretched slaves, I should have been permanently the worse for the custom of sinning and washing the sin away by confession.
Free, however, from that debasing practice, my conscience assumed the rule, and, independently of hopes and fears, it clearly blamed what was clearly wrong, and, as it were, learnt to act by virtue of its natural supremacy.* [*Note:Free at length (as I feel when copying, in 1835, my original manuscript) from the early and deeply-seated habits of that ascetic humility, which considers it a Christian duty to exaggerate one’s own faults, I am bound to declare that very few of my actions, during that period, were such as now have my complete reprobation and that even those had circumstances which greatly excused them. I do not justify myself before God but men, such as they are, have no right to condemn me. The circumstances in which I was placed were very trying yet I heartily thank God that his Providence watched over me, and prevented my preparing sources of remorse for my old age.]
That a love of what is right, and an abhorrence of baseness, however sanctified by superstition, had been implanted in my soul, I remember with thankfulness and pleasure. A proof of this occurred at the time of my first general confession, which, as it is in some degree characteristic of the original temper of my mind, I will not leave unnoticed. My earliest friend Marmol had lent me a Latin treatise of Muratori, orthodox on every point except where the author disapproves the solemn vow frequently made in Spain, binding the person who takes it to lose his life rather than admit that the Virgin Mary was conceived in Original Sin.<snip>An order of knighthood was established, bearing a badge expressive of the sinless Virgin Mary. The knights could not be installed unless they took an oath that they would assert the Virgin Mary’s exemption from original sin even at the risk of their lives. This practice was adopted by every corporation and guild in Spain, so that not even a tailor could legitimately ply his needle without pledging his life to the defence of the Virgin’s honour. The learned Muratori, with some French and Italian divines, had questioned the morality of that oath. The church was silent, but the Spanish Inquisition condemned the book.
As the obnoxious paragraph did not occupy more than half a page, my friend Marmol, who approved the rest of the book, thought that the holy tribunal had been too severe, and took the liberty, not only of keeping Muratori’s work, but of lending it to me. This fact could not escape my recollection under the terrors raised by the Spiritual Exercises. I had to prepare my confession by the assistance of a printed Interrogatory, containing a list of every species and variety of sin which casuistry has defined. Reading prohibited books was of course one of the heads of accusation. This was followed by another founded upon the duty of informing against any one who possessed them. The confessor I well knew could not avail himself for that purpose of a disclosure made during confession, nor was it necessary to name the person who had the book, but I knew also that I could not obtain absolution, unless I authorised him to carry the information to the Inquisition, or engaged myself to be the informer.
In the greatest distress of mind I laid the whole case before the Sub-Director whom I had chosen to be my confessor. He told me he could not absolve me unless I promised to accuse my friend of having lent me a prohibited book. I well recollect the sort of trembling yet resolute courage with which I told him, that I would rather "go to hell" than betray my friend. The priest was not insensible to the character and source of this resolution he delayed the decision till the last day of the Exercises, and I believe consulted Father Vega, who being a man of great penetration, and probably knowing that the book in question was not at all dangerous, advised him not to insist upon my accusing its owner. I was only desired to caution my friend against possessing a book forbidden by the Inquisition. I complied with the injunction, and so my trial ended.
I will not tire you with an account of the remaining part of the Spiritual Exercises. The system was essentially the same from beginning to end, yet with this modification, that as, during the first half of the operation, every spring was put in motion to strike the mind with terror, so, during the second half, the object in view was a revulsion of feeling, consisting in that peculiar state of the mind, that devotional tenderness, which renders the mental faculties powerless, and reduces the moral being to the weakness of infancy.
The scene which the chapel presented on the last day of the Exercises cannot easily be described. The consecrated wafer was exposed to view, encircled with gold and diamonds in a frame of uncommon splendour and richness. The altar on which it stood was one mass of light, so numerous were the wax candles that burnt upon it. The sound of music was interrupted only to give way to the almost frantic strains of impassioned tenderness in which Father Vega addressed the Deity, in whose immediate bodily presence he conceived himself to be. I will not repeat any of the remarkable (it would be more correct to say objectionable) expressions used by the spiritual leader, most of them borrowed from the mystic writers and some of the fathers; but whatever be their source, I consider them not only as irreverent, hut as bordering on indelicacy.
To conclude this already too long episode of my narrative—before the dawn of the following day a high Mass was celebrated by the Director, at which all the congregation received the communion. They then embraced (such is the Spanish custom) Padre Vega, and set out for their different homes.
The effect of this mystic discipline upon my mind and feelings was certainly powerful, but there was a secret source of resistance which fortunately opposed the direct tendency of that part of my education, else my warm temper might have made me a perfect visionary. With the most ready will to obey the impulse, and the most sincere desire to rise to that summit of devotional perfection which was so often and so forcibly marked out to me, I could never overcome my natural dislike to that cloying, that mawkish devotion. Though tears flowed from my eyes, and convulsive sobs were wrung from my bosom, my natural taste recoiled from that mixture of animal affection (I do not know a more appropriate name) with spiritual matters, which is the very essence of mysticism.
This was a feeling of the most beneficial tendency during that period of my life, in which I performed the duties of a confessor, and enjoyed the dangerous privileges which the Roman Catholic priesthood possesses. God, to whom I render, thanks for his especial protection in that respect, knows that both in a state of belief, and in the opposite, I abhorred to avail myself of religion for any immoral purpose; from such a stain I am pure. Now II will again take up my personal narrative.
The wavering I had felt as to my future profession was indeed removed by the Spiritual Exercises; but the necessity of their influence increased as the time approached when I was to bind myself to the Church for ever. The least relaxation from the usual tenor of my life, the slightest contact with any but the society in which I was kept by the active and sagacious mind of my mother, never failed to produce a coldness towards the clerical profession.
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