land; for it is a good thing. And those which find themselves grieved in conscience might go to a learned man and there fetch of him comfort of the Word of God, and so come to a quiet conscience. . . And sure it grieveth me much that such confessions are not kept in England."

1

Canon 113 of the Church of England, put forth in 1603, refers thus to the sacramental seal in Confession: "Provided always, That if any man confess his secret and hidden sins to the Minister, for the unburdening of his conscience, and to receive spiritual consolation and ease of mind from him; we do straitly charge and admonish him, that he do not at any time reveal and make known to any person whatsoever any crime or offence so committed to his trust and secrecy (except they be such crimes as by the laws of this realm his own life may be called into question for concealing the same), under pain of irregularity."

"Irregularity," we may explain, not only deprives a man of all spiritual promotion for the present time, but makes him utterly incapable of any for the time to come, and therefore is the greatest penalty, except degradation from the priesthood, to which a priest can be subject.

Between the years 1619 and 1679 a series of Visitation Articles were set forth by certain bishops, ten

1 Sermon on the 3d Sunday after Epiphany, Vol. ii. p. 852.

of whom (Bishops Overall, Andrewes, Montague, Lindsell, Dee, Duppa, Juxon, Wren, Fuller, and Gunning) inquired:

1. As to the persons excommunicated and of their obtaining their Absolution.

2. Whether the Minister exhorted those troubled or disquieted to open their grief, that they may by the Minister receive the benefit of Absolution.

3. Whether the Minister revealed any crimes or offences, so committed to his trust and secrecy, contrary to the 113th Canon.

It would be quite easy to multiply the names of bishops and divines in the Church of England, from the Reformation down to the present day, who have taught the importance of Confession to a priest, and have themselves practised it; but those already given are surely sufficient to prove the point, including, as they do, such saintly and representative men as Andrewes and Overall, and such thorough-going reformers as Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer.

To this objection, therefore, we may reply that, so far from the Reformers objecting to Confession, they explicitly declared their entire agreement with it.

IX. The last objection we shall notice is that Confession has been abused. This is, perhaps, true; but certainly such abuse has been very rare in the Church of England, and not nearly as fre

quent as abuse of similar confidences between patient and physician, or lawyer and client. It is very doubtful whether those who bring forward this objection could show one instance within their own knowledge in which Confession had been thus abused. But since our Church leaves her children free to go to whomsoever they please for Confession, she has provided a simple and adequate remedy; for no one need go a second time to any priest whom he thought took a wrong advantage of his office in administering this Sacrament.

As a matter of fact and experience, the real danger is not in going to Confession to a priest in the open church, with all the protection of sacramental solemnity; but in long, confidential talks in a private room, with no such safeguard. These have led again and again to scandal, and are to be avoided. They minister often to a morbid craving for sympathy, and they lead to nothing of any value, since the priest is sought, not for the benefit of Absolution, but at best only for advice.

CHAPTER X

CONCLUSION

We are now in a position to gather up the results of our investigation; and they may be stated somewhat as follows:

We are taught in the Creed to believe in the forgiveness of sins, and in the Lord's Prayer to pray for this.

We find that forgiveness flows from God's love, and belongs to His nature; so that His "nature and property is always to have mercy and to forgive." And we learn from our Lord Himself that, in regard to this forgiveness, there is no limit either to its frequency or to its extent.

In response to a question of S. Peter's, Christ tells us that we are to forgive not "until seven times," but "until seventy times seven"; and in this He is proposing for our standard nothing less than the long-suffering and mercy of God Himself. Further, in the parable which follows, He contrasts the compassion of the king, who freely forgives the enormous debt (ten thousand talents) which no servant could pay, with the petty exaction of the unmerciful servant

in cruelly enforcing the payment of so paltry a sum as one hundred pence.

In this very passage, however, which so fully sets forth the frequency and extent of God's mercy, our Lord draws attention to the fact that this mercy has its conditions; that the individual who seeks it, in order to obtain it must be forgivable; that is, that God must see in him possibilities of moral change and improvement, and that these possibilities must be realized on his part by true repentance.

Having thus satisfied ourselves that the forgiveness of sins involves repentance, we further find that our Lord has provided in Holy Scripture and in His Church a means by which the sinner may manifest his penitence and receive the assurance of the forgiveness of his sins, this assurance being conveyed to him, together with the forgiveness of sins, by Absolution, and his penitence being manifested by Contrition, Confession, and Satisfaction.

All this we have seen is set forth in Holy Scripture, and clearly taught in our Prayer Book. Our Church, however, throws the responsibility for using this means of grace upon each individual, refusing to make the practice of Confession and Absolution compulsory, but providing that all shall be daily reminded that God has given power to His ministers to absolve, and daily exhorted to pray for true repentance.