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fession made thereof; in which respect whereas all men did willingly the one, but would as willingly have withdrawn themselves from the other had they known how; "Is it tolerable (saith St. Ambrose) that to sue to God, thou shouldest be ashamed, which blusheth not to seek and sue unto man? Should it grieve thee to be a suppliant to him from whom thou canst not possibly hide thyself; when to open thy sins to him, from whom, if thou wouldest, thou mightest conceal them, it doth not any thing at all trouble thee? This thou art loath to do in the church, where, all being sinners, nothing is more opprobrious indeed than concealment of sin, the most humble the best thought of, and the lowliest accounted the justest." All this notwithstanding, we should do them very great wrong to father any such opinion upon them, as if they did teach it a thing impossible for any sinner to reconcile himself unto God without confession unto the priest.

Would Chrysostom thus persuaded have said, "Let the inquiry and punishment of thy offences be made in thy own thoughts; let the tribunal whereat thou arraignest thyself, be without witness; let God, and only God, see thee and thy confession?

Col. lat.

20. c. 8.

Would Cassianus so believing have given counsel, “that if Cassian. any were withheld with bashfulness from discovering their faults to men, they should be so much the more instant and constant in opening them by supplication to God himself, whose wont is to help without publication of men's shame, and not to upbraid them when he pardoneth?"

Prosper.

Finally, would Prosper settled in his opinion have made it, as touching reconciliation to God, a matter indifferent, de Vita Contempl. "whether men of ecclesiastical order did detect their crimes 1. 3. c. 7. by confession, or leaving the world ignorant thereof, would separate voluntarily themselves for a time from the altar, though not in affection, yet in execution of their ministry, and so bewail their corrupt life? Would he have willed them as he doth to make bold of it, that the favour of God being either way recovered by fruits of forcible repentance, they should not only receive whatsoever they had lost by sin, but also, after their new enfranchisement, aspire to endless joys of that supernal city ?" To conclude, we every where find the use of confession, especially public, allowed of and

2 Chrys. Hom. Περὶ μετανοίας καὶ ἐξομολογήσεως παρὰ τοῖς λογισμοῖς γενέσθω τῶν πεπ· λημμελημένων ἡ ἐξέτασις, ἀμάρτυρον ἔστω τὸ δικαστήριον· ὁ Θεὸς ὁράτω μόνος ἐξομολογούμενον.

commended by the fathers; but that extreme and rigorous necessity of auricular and private confession, which is at this day so mightily upheld by the church of Rome, we find not. First, it was not then the faith and doctrine of God's church, as of the papacy at this present. Secondly, that the only remedy for sin after baptism is sacramental penitency. Thirdly, that confession in secret is an essential part thereof. Fourthly, that God himself cannot now forgive sin without the priest. That, because forgiveness at the hands of the priest must arise from confession in the offenders, therefore to confess unto him is a matter of such necessity, as being not either in deed, or at the least in desire performed, excludeth utterly from all pardon, and must consequently in Scripture be commanded wheresoever any promise of forgiveness is made. No, no; these opinions have youth in their countenance, antiquity knew them not, it never thought nor dreamed of them.

But to let pass the papacy. Forasmuch as repentance doth import alteration within the mind of a sinful man, whereby, through the power of God's most gracious and blessed Spirit, he seeth, and with unfeigned sorrow acknowledgeth, former offences committed against God, hath them in utter detestation, seeking pardon for them in such sort as a Christian should do, and with a resolute purpose settleth himself to avoid them, leading, as near as God shall assist him, for ever after, an unspotted life; and in the order (which Christian religion hath taught for procurement of God's mercy towards sinners), confession is acknowledged a princiCalv. Inst. pal duty, yea, in some cases, confession to man, not to God 1.3. c. 4. only; it is not in reformed churches denied by the learneder sort of divines, but that even this confession, cleared from all errors, is both lawful and behoveful for God's people.

sect. 7.

Confession by man being either private or public, private confession to the minister alone touching secret crimes, or absolution thereupon ensuing, as the one, so the other is neither practised by the French discipline, nor used in any of those churches which have been cast by the French mould. Open confession to be made in the face of the whole congregation by notorious malefactors they hold necessary; howbeit not necessary towards the remission of sins," but only in * Sed tantum ut ecclesiæ sit aliqua ratione satisfactum, et omnes unius pœnitentia confirmentur, qui fuerant unius peccatis et scandalis vulnerati. Sadeel. in Psal. 32. v. 5. Harm. conf. sect. 8. ex 5. cap. confess. Bohem.

some sort to content the church, and that one man's repentance may seem to strengthen many, which before have been weakened by one man's fall.

Saxonians and Bohemians in their discipline constrain no man to open confession. Their doctrine is, that whose faults have been public, and thereby scandalous unto the world, such, when God giveth them the spirit of repentance, ought as solemnly to return, as they have openly gone astray; first, for the better testimony of their own unfeigned conversion unto God; secondly, the more to notify their reconcilement unto the church; and lastly, that others may make benefit of their example.

But concerning confession in private, the churches of Germany, as well the rest as Lutherans, agree, that all men should at certain times confess their offences to God in the hearing of God's ministers, thereby to shew how their sins displease them; to receive instruction for the warier carriage of themselves hereafter; to be soundly resolved, if any scruple or snare of conscience do entangle their minds; and, which is most material, to the end that men may at God's hand seek every one his own particular pardon, through the power of those keys which the minister of God using according to our blessed Saviour's institution in that case it is their part to accept the benefit thereof, as God's most merciful ordinance for their good, and without any distrust or doubt to embrace joyfully his grace so given them according to the word of our Lord, which hath said, "Whose sins ye remit they are remitted". So that grounding upon this assured belief, they are to rest with minds encouraged and persuaded concerning the forgiveness of all their sins, as out of Christ's Cap. 5. own word and power by the ministry of the keys.

It standeth with us in the church of England, as touching public confession, thus:

First, seeing day by day we in our church begin our public prayers to Almighty God with public acknowledgment of our sins, in which confession every man, prostrate as it were before his glorious majesty, crieth against himself, and the minister with one sentence pronounceth universally all clear whose acknowledgment so made hath proceeded from a true penitent mind; what reason is there every man should not, under the general terms of confession, represent to himself his own particulars whatsoever, and adjoining thereunto that affection which a contrite spirit worketh, embrace to as full

confess.

Bohem.

effect the words of Divine grace, as if the same were severally and particularly uttered with addition of prayers, imposition of hands, or all the ceremonies and solemnities that might be used for the strengthening of men's affiance in God's peculiar mercy towards them? such compliments are helps to support our weakness, and not causes that serve to procure or produce his gifts, as David speaketh. The difference of general and particular forms in confession and absolution is not material that any man's safety or ghostly good should depend upon it. And for private confession and absolution it standeth thus with us:

"The minister's power to absolve is publicly taught and professed, the church not denied to have authority either of abridging or enlarging the use and exercise of that power, upon the people no such necessity imposed of opening their transgression unto men, as if remission of sins otherwise were impossible; neither any such opinion had of the thing itself, as though it were either unlawful or unprofitable, save only for these inconveniences which the world hath by experience observed in it heretofore. And in regard thereof, the church of England hath hitherto thought it the safer way to refer men's hidden crimes unto God and themselves only; howbeit, not without special caution for the admonition of such as come to the holy sacrament, and for the comfort of such as are ready to depart the world. First, because there are but few that consider how much that part of Divine service, which consists in partaking the holy eucharist, doth import their souls; what they lose by neglect thereof, and what by devout practice they might attain unto: therefore, lest carelessness of general confession should, as commonly it doth, extinguish all remorse of men's particular enormous crimes, our custom (whensoever men present themselves at the Lord's table) is, solemnly to give themselves fearful admonition, what woes are perpendicularly hanging over the heads of such as dare adventure to put forth their unworthy hands to those admirable mysteries of life, which have by rare examples been proved conduits of irremediable death to impenitent receivers; whom therefore, as we repel being known, so being not known, we cannot but terrify. Yet, with us, the ministers of God's most holy word and sacraments, being all put in trust with the custody and dispensation of those mys

a As for private confession, abuses and errors set apart, we condemn it not, but leave it at liberty. Jewell. Defen. part 156.

teries wherein our commuuion is, and hath been ever accounted the highest grace that men on earth are admitted unto, have therefore all equally the same power to withhold that sacred mystical food from notorious evil-livers, from such as have any way wronged their neighbours, and from parties between whom there doth open hatred and malice appear, till the first sort have reformed their wicked lives, the second recompensed them unto whom they were injurious, and the last condescended unto some course of Christian reconciliation, whereupon their mutual accord may ensue. In which cases for the first branch of wicked life; and the last, which is open enmity, there can arise no great difficulty about the exercise of his power: in the second, concerning wrongs, they may, if men shall presume to define or measure injuries according to their own conceits, be depraved oftentimes as well by error as partiality, and that no less to the minister himself, than in another of the people under him.

a

The knowledge therefore which he taketh of wrongs, must rise, as it doth in the other two, not from his own opinion or conscience, but from the evidence of the fact which is committed; yea, from such evidence as neither doth admit denial nor defence. For if the offender, having either colour of law to uphold, or any other pretence to excuse his own uncharitable and wrongful dealings, shall wilfully stand in defence thereof, it serveth as bar to the power of the minister in this kind. Because (as it is observed by men of very good judgment in these affairs) although in this sort our separating of them be not to strike them with the mortal wound of excommunication, but to stay them rather from running desperately headlong into their own harm; yet it is not in us to sever from the holy communion but such as are either found culpable by their own confession, or have been convicted in some public, secular, or ecclesiastical court. For who is he that dares take upon him to be any man's both accuser and judge? Evil persons are not rashly, and (as we list) to be

a Nos a communione quenquam prohibere non possumus. Quamvis hæc prohibitio nondum sit mortalis, sed medicinalis, nisi aut sponte confessum, aut aliquo sive seculari, sive ecclesiastico judicio accusatum atque convictum. Quis enim sibi utrumque audet assumere, ut cuiquam ipse sit et accusator et judex ?

b Non enim temere et quodammodo libet, sed propter judicium, ab ecclesiæ communione separandi sunt mali, ut si propter judicium auferri non possint, tolerentur potius, velut paleæ cum tritico. Multi corriguntur, ut Petrus; multi tolerantur, ut Judas; multi nesciuntur, donec veniat dominus, et illuminabit abscondita tenebrarum. Rhenan, admonit. de dogmat. Tertul.

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