4. When the penitent, at the end of his time of exclusion, came before the bishop to be restored, the mode of his reconciliation was not by the indicative, “I absolve thee;" that form was not adopted by any part of the Church for over one thousand years, and is still unused by the Easterns.

The form always employed was a prayer, and on the utterance of that the Divine answer was assumed as fulfilling what had been promised to the penitent, and the absolution and restoration to communion was complete.

The first notable invasion on the primitive principle that the bishop was, by virtue of his office, the one with whom the administration of penance and restoration to Communion altogether rested, was "in consequence of the fierceness of the Decian persecution." It was found at that time "that the bishop alone was not sufficient for this office." So many of those who "lapsed" or fell back into paganism during its continuance, afterward desired to confess, submit to the appointed discipline, and be restored to the communion of the faithful, that the bishops began to delegate presbyters to aid them in this work.1

Shortly after this time and for some centuries later on we find canons passed allowing others than bishops to administer absolution' in cases of great danger or

1 Pelliccia, pp. 457, 458. After some centuries we find the bishop giving this right, to reconcile a penitent, to a presbyter, or, in the absence of a presbyter, to a deacon, if the man was near death. The presbyters reconciled penitents only by virtue of a delegated right. The right of reconciling penitents, except in case of necessity, was withheld by the early fathers equally from presbyters and from deacons.”

2 Canons of Elvira, XXXII (Héféle's "Histoire," etc., Vol. I, p. 147).

imminent death; under such conditions presbyters, deacons, and even monks, who at this period were yet mostly laymen, could perform the office of uttering the prayer in which was conveyed the reconciliation and absolution which the dying penitent desired. But the proviso was always added or implied that if the person should recover he must go to the bishop by whom the penance had been imposed, and through the laying on of his hands receive the confirmation of the absolution, and, also, if any portion of the time appointed for his penance yet remained unfulfilled, he must complete this to the full before he could be readmitted to the actual communion of the Church.

Hence it is evident that the power of absolution was not regarded by the primitive Church, nor even by the mediæval Church for many centuries, as an authority inherent in the priesthood, nor one which simply as priests they were allowed to exercise; for a long period

Héféle adds, "This Canon is entirely in conformity with the ancient custom, according to which only a bishop and not a priest could receive a penitent into the Church again. It was only in case of extreme necessity (cogente tamen infirmitate, etc.) that a priest, or, under certain conditions, even a deacon was allowed this power."

Nice, Canon XIII, orders that the bishop shall administer the Eucharist to any one truly penitent and in danger of death, and also that "if he should not die after having been absolved and admitted to Communion, he must be placed again among those who take part in prayer" (i. e., must fulfil his appointed time of exclusion).

And the Synod of Orange decrees (A.D. 441), "If any sick persons who have received Communion should recover, they must continue yet in their place as penitents, and not be fully reconciled by the laying on of the hand (of the bishop) until they have fully completed the penance appointed them." Héféle's "Histoire," etc., Vol. II, p. 474. Bingham, XIX, p. 2, 8 4.

it was wholly forbidden them, when they were first permitted to employ it, it was simply as delegates and to aid the bishop, and in this capacity they shared it with the deacon and the yet lay monk, and when the peril of death did call on them to use it, this prerogative was so little an essential of their order that it needed the confirmation of a bishop for its completeness if the person recovered.

As it was many centuries before the authoritative administration of penance came to be regarded as an inherent prerogative of the priesthood,' so was it a long process before it became a fixed law that every member of the Church must make a personal, private confession to a priest.

Testimonies abound in most of the fathers for the first six hundred years and more, that however salutary for personal self-discipline confession to a minister, with penance and prayer by him for forgiveness, might be to the individual Christian, it was not even thought of as a matter of necessary and constant ob

1 The assertion in the Roman Ordinal of a special power in the priesthood to forgive sins dates only from the twelfth century, when the clause was first introduced, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whosesoever sins ye remit they are remitted, and whosesoever sins ye retain they are retained" [John xx, 23], and the words construed to mean the inherent power in the priesthood of authoritative absolution. Pelliccia, p. 50, says these words "are wanting in rituals more ancient than the twelfth century, and, perhaps, only began to be generally used after the sixteenth century."

Blunt's "Annotated Prayer Book," p. 563: "The actual words are first found in a book belonging to Mayence, of the thirteenth century. No allusion to them in the ancient rituals."

Haddon on "Apostolical Succession," etc., p. 250: "A form which is not in the Eastern ordinals.

ligation on all members of the Church, still less was it regarded, as in any sense whatever, a requirement upon whose fulfillment salvation must depend.

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Several Canons, also, of important Councils show this to have been the case. One from the Second Council of Chalons, in France, as late as 813, indicates very clearly the mind of the Church upon this subject, and at the same time marks the beginning of the tendencies which finally culminated in the full mediæval doctrine of sacramental confession. This Canon declares,1 "Some 'say they ought to confess their sins to God only, some “think they are to be confessed unto the priests, both "of which, not without great fruit, are practiced in "the Holy Church, for the confession which is made "to God purges the sins, and that made to the priest teaches how the sins should be purged." Note here with reference to the form this doctrine afterward assumed the effects assigned to the two modes of confession— that "to God purgeth away the sins "-he who truly confesses to God needs no absolution from the lips of man; that "to the priest teacheth how the sins should be purged," that is, enables him to guide and direct and discipline the penitent where he may need it to a

1Héféle's "Histoire," etc., Vol. V, p. 188.

In a collection of English canons about 994 A.D. (Johnson's “ Canons," Vol. I, p. 469) confession is treated of at considerable length. Canon XXX says, “ After confession, with groaning, etc., we should pray for our self to the Lord, for confession contributes to our good insomuch that by ghostly advice received from the priest and medicine for those blemishes which we confess to be in us by means of our own deeds, and by observing the injunctions he gives us we may blot out our sins, etc." "Not one word here," says Johnson, "of the benefits of the priest's absolution.".

higher spiritual life. There is as yet no word nor hint of the necessity of confession to salvation, or that it is an essential element of Christian life and culture.

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'So," says the author of the article on Exomologesis (confession) in the "Dictionary of Christian Antiquities" (p. 647), "it remained an open question for the next three hundred years,” and in fact the obligation and necessity of private confession and absolution did not become the law of the Western Church, nor even its universal usage, until in 1215 the Fourth Council of the Lateran' ordained, “That all the faithful of each sex after coming to years of discretion shall confess their sins in private at least once in the year to their own priest." So late and modern, and so little entitled to be called primitive or Catholic is this practice, which is now declared to be essential to the salvation of every human soul.

About the beginning of this same century, the thirteenth, the Western part of the Church also finally discarded the primitive form of effecting the reconciliation and absolution of the penitent by prayer, and substituted in place of it the positive or indicative declaration "I absolve thee," etc., which has since continued to be the form in the Roman communions.

The "Catholic Dictionary" (p. 645) says that

1 Héféle's "Histoire des Conciles," Vol. VIII, p. 133, Canon XXI. Rev. T. T. Carter (of Clewer) says of this: "The first material innova"tion on the practice of antiquity purposely introduced was the decree "of the Fourth Lateran Council of A.D. 1215, which established the "absolute necessity of periodical confession as a condition of continued "fellowship with the Church. This decree was enforced by severe "" penalties, excommunication and the denial of Christian burial." "On "Doctrine of Confession," p. 48.