Throughout the preceding section on virtues and vices, which usually forms a quarto volume of some 500 or 600 pages, little appeal is made to positive revelation. The pronouncements of the theologian are enforced from time to time by texts from Scripture and references to ecclesiastical legislation, but the main portion of the work is purely ethical and rational. The second section, however, treats of obligations which are wholly connected with their revealed dogmas: it discusses at great length (in a second quarto volume of 500 pages) the seven sacraments of the Church of Rome, the vast number of obligations they entail in practical life, the transgressions which arise from their neglect or abuse, the theory and the practice of their constitution. The two principal treatises are on confession and matrimony; in the former the future confessor receives the necessary directions for his task (a much more complicated one than is commonly supposed), and in the latter the numerous Catholic impediments to marriage and their dispensations are treated, and there is a further discussion of conjugal life. The path throughout is beset with the innumerable conflicts of theologians, and every point is profusely illustrated with real or fictitious ‘cases.’
Moral theology is regarded as the most important of sacerdotal studies, and in many monastic orders it is the only study which is seriously cultivated. Young priests have annual examinations in it for many years
