Now you shall soon see, that the conjectures of these divines, and their learned researches have terminated in inverting the natural and legitimate order in this genealogy of the two confessions; that according to the principles of common sense, which they extol, they ought to have honestly acknowledged that public confession sprung from private confession, and that we cannot suppose the former to have had any other extraction, without at the same time rejecting what reason teaches, and positive authorities demonstrate. The following considerations, by casting some light on a subject, on which confusion has not been thrown without design, will, I flatter myself, suffice to convince you of these two points; first, that without the divine institution of sacramental confession, the establishment of public confession would have been impracticable in the Church; in the second place, that public confession, such as it was practised, could not be conceived but on the supposition that it was preceded by private confession. I shall prove,

after this, the justness of this second assertion, by positive and peremptory authorities; and then it will be no longer possible to doubt that, in point of right and fact, private and entire confession invariably preceded that confession, which was made partially in public.

1o. I maintain that, without the divine institution of sacramental confession, the establishment of public confession would have been absolutely impracticable in the Church. Call to mind here, Sir, that extreme repugnance which you have so often testified to confession, such as for many ages has been going on between the priest and the penitent.

We have seen that this repugnance has ex

isted at all times and in all men, because it has its root in that self-love, which is born with us, and is inherent in our nature; that consequently no human power could ever have succeeded in subduing it. And how then, I ask, should it have triumphed over it, by giving it new strength, and pushing it to the last extremity? For here the question is, not to go and declare in secrecy our faults to one single minister of Jesus Christ, bound by every law, natural, divine, and human, and under pain of the severest punishments, to keep an inviolable secrecy; but before all the faithful indiscriminately, before our friends and acquaintance, before our domestics, our children, strangers, and enemies. The very idea of this is most repugnant to our feelings. What man, in compliance with a mere point of discipline, would ever have consented to go through so revolting an humiliation, if he had thought that Jesus Christ required of him no more than to confess his sins to God alone. There is no one who does not feel most decidedly in himself, that all the powers of the world put together would never have been able to force the people to it; much less would they have attempted to have subjected themselves to it.

Will your divines reply, that this confession of the ancient times extended not to every fault, that it was confined to public offences, and that it is less painful to self-love to acknowledge in public what is unknown to no one, than to declare to a single individual what is not known by him?

It seems, it is true, that thus the most sensible part of the confusion and shame is taken away from public confession, when once it is limited to crimes publicly committed. Yet however there would still

remain sufficient to terrify human nature, and should they have a right, which they have not, to confine this confession to public transgressions, they would not explain any better the qualities and the characters, which I discover belonging to it in antiquity, and which it is impossible not to perceive. For observe, that if, in the ordinary course of civil society, a person has the misfortune publicly to commit a serious crime, and an injurious, cruel, or infamous action, he never wants excuses for its extenuation. It was done by a sudden impulse, over which he had no control; he was not master of himself; he knew not where he was, or what he said, or what he did; it was done more through levity, than any intention to injure, and he did not foresee the fatal consequences; or else, he had been outrageously provoked, or hurried on by drunkenness or passion. But in the ancient penance, at the entrance of a Church, in the habit of mourning, with the head shaved, no palliations, excuses, or pretexts were heard. The sinner sincerely deposed against himself, was his own accuser, exposed to light his own baseness aud perversity, acknowledged that he did it with full deliberation, and displayed to men the full deformity of his conduct, and the tears and lamentation, which accompanied the manifestation of his crimes, manifested his sincere repentance.

I can conceive the courageous resignation of these penitents in thus drinking all the bitterness of the chalice, if they were persuaded that Jesus Christ presented it to them by the hands of his ministers. I can conceive their peaceful resignation, if they imagine they are submitting to a person invested with divine authority, if in the

VOL. II.

order, which they have received, they have heard the sentence of God himself; if they are convinced that they must comply with it on earth, in order to be pardoned in heaven. Without this, I know not how to account for it; and this public confession, even of notorious crimes alone, presents to me nothing but a phenomenon contrary to every moral law, and to the constitution of the human heart.

Do not deceive yourself, Sir; we must proceed a step further; for it is most positively false that this confession was confined to public crimes alone, since the most secret faults were often there severely condemned. We learn from Irenæus1, that many women had, for a long time, been seduced by the artifices and the discourse of the heretic Marcus; but that, returning to the Church, they had confessed that this hypocrite after having cast them, by means of his potions and charms, into a bewildered state, in which they had no power over themselves, had shamefully abused their persons. The wife of a deacon, as this same Father relates, had deserted her husband to follow this magician; she had shared the fate of the other victims; at last opening her eyes to the indignity of her conduct, she spent the remainder of her days in public penance, bewailing the disgrace which this seducer had brought upon her. These faults were secret, and yet were publicly confessed, since they came to the knowledge of the historian who relates them. The same author tells us again, that Cerdo passed his life in leaving the Church, and returning to it, in secretly spreading the poison of his doctrine, and

Euse

in publicly accusing himself of the same. bius' relates that of the three calumniators, who had blackened the reputation of Narcissus, bishop of Jerusalem, two having made an unhappy end, the third fearing the like fate, submitted to make a public manifestation of the odious conspiracy that he had plotted with his two accomplices, and to undergo a long and severe course of penance. He says,

moreover, that some confessors of the faith, deceived by the austere doctrine of the relentless and audacious Novatus, but having afterwards acknowledged their errors, divulged in the Church their own wickedness and that of Novatus.

Does not Tertullian rise up, with the vigour of his character and the energy of his style, against those timid and falsely delicate souls, that had not the courage to manifest their faults and lay open the folds of their conscience, and which, delighting in escaping from men, as if they could escape from God, perished eternally with their foolish shame, like to those sick persons, who, being attacked in their secret members, and not being able to resolve upon exposing them to the eye of the physician, sunk for want of assistance, under the evil which they obstinately concealed? Our adversaries, for fear of discovering sacramental confession so high in antiquity, will have it that Tertullian here points out confession before all the Church. Be it So. What will they gain by it? For is it not evident that in that case Tertullian included secret faults? It is then true that they were, sometimes at least, to be publicly divulged. This I could prove to you by still other authorities; but I suppress

1L. VI. c. IX.