fully, that thinking people and devout theologians recognized that the real value of all these forms of discipline lay "in the inward confession of sin and that "true repentance which springs from love," but it is equally evident that whatever truths the few earnest thinkers may have held regarding it, the real character and tendency of the system of "sacramental confession," as thus evolved, was mechanical and external and widely different in almost every principle and in its entire ministration from the doctrines and usages of the Church through all its early centuries, as well as all we learn concerning this matter from Holy Scriptures.

But there is yet another phase of the medieval penitential system which is necessary to a full understanding of that system in all its bearings, and which is still further opposed, if possible, to all the Scriptural and primitive teachings on this subject than those which have been already noticed.

This was the extension of the power of the priesthood to the life beyond the grave, and with this the amazing claims that they were able to visit an offending soul with penalties in the other world by excommunication and anathema pronounced upon the dead, and also that they possessed a corresponding ability, by the mechanical acts of saying masses for the departed, or performing the work necessary to obtain an indulgence, to remove the curses they had imposed by their sentence, or to "satisfy for," and thus terminate the pains of those doomed to purgatory for "sins not yet fully expiated."

The tremendous, indeed awful, power thus claimed

by the clergy of following each soul into the other world with their excommunications and anathemas, had first come prominently before the Church in the Second Council of Constantinople (known as the Fifth General Council, A.D. 553).

It was then proposed by the Emperor Justinian, who desired to vent his wrath against certain men long dead; and whom, with their doctrines and followers, he wished to condemn to eternal torments, but as they had died in the communion of the Church, this could only be done by an excommunication and an anathema, which should penetrate with their curse into the regions of the dead, and carry their fearful sentence into execution there. The project was received at first with almost universal indignation and horror. The then Pope of Rome, Vigilius, repelled it vehemently as new, against all right, and opposed to all the past history of the Church. He said (Héféle's "Histoire des Conciles," Vol. III, p. 498), "That he had examined "with great care what his predecessors had said on the "question. Leo and Gelasius had declared expressly against this measure, and had maintained that we "must leave the dead to the Divine Justice, and the "Roman Church had always followed this rule in her "practice," etc.

But under the pressure of imperial influence it was forced upon the Council and the anathemas pronounced (Héféle, p. 508), and after a long struggle the Pope himself recanted, and some seven months subsequent to the adjournment of the Synod approved its action in a letter (Héféle, p. 524), which declares that "the enemy of the human race, who is everywhere sowing

"tares, had deceived him and his colleagues.1

But "that Christ had anew chased away the darkness from "his mind, and pacified the Church in the whole world."

The doctrine once admitted was so congenial to the principles of priestly power which were now becoming dominant, that it was very rapidly and universally adopted by the clergy, and utilized in countless ways as a mighty engine of clerical authority, and means of ecclesiastical discipline or punishment.

As the excommunication, or the penalty of "yet unexpiated sin" could thus extend with their sufferings beyond the grave, there were, of course, corresponding means placed at the disposal of the Church for the mitigation or removal of these inflictions.

1 Héféle, ut sup.: The Letter "est datée du 8 décembre 553, Cette "date nous apprend qu'il s'était passé sept mois depuis la fin du "Synode lorsque Vigile se décida à porter son jugement. Il y parle ainsi, ‘L'ennemi du genre humain, qui sème partout la zizanie l'avait "trompé, lui et ses collègues réunis à Constantinople. Mais le Christ "avait de nouveau chassé les ténèbres de son esprit, et pacifié l'église de "l'univers entier,'" etc.

2 The mode in which the power of the Church is thus exerted in the regions of the dead, and also the applications that might be made of it, are both illustrated by a story which Pope Gregory I (the Great) tells of himself (Dialogues, Lib. IV, ch. 55, in Vol. II, p. 468).

It was against the rule of the monastery, of which Gregory was abbot, for any of its monks to have money of their own. One of the brethren being taken mortally ill, there were found upon his person, shortly before he died, three pieces of gold coin. In high indignation at this offence Gregory forbad the dying monk the last offices of the Church, and ordered his body to be cast, without the rites of burial, on a dungheap. After a month had elapsed, the abbot relented, and ordered daily masses to be offered for his absolution for the space of thirty days. In the absorbing duties of his office Gregory had, however, forgotten the flight of time, when one day a brother of the convent came to him, and

Accordingly, it was now declared that man's "temporal" condition does not end at death; it is not finally terminated till the general, last judgment. In the meantime, all who are in the Church, and it is of these only we are treating here, come to the hour of death with some, more or less, of penalty yet due for sins they have committed, and they pass into the other world with a certain quantity of this to be paid for by sufferings of corresponding length and fierceness there. Only a few of the most eminent saints die without a debt of this unliquidated punishment to be then paid off by torments or to be otherwise satisfied for through the Church's appointed means.

"

The place or state into which the soul thus passes to endure, by sufferings in fire, what is yet due of its "temporary punishment," is called purgatory, and it

told him that the offending brother had appeared to him in a vision, and said "that up to that day it had been very ill with him, but " now all was well, because that day he had received the Communion (quia hodie communionem recipi); and, on counting the time, it was "found that it was exactly the end of the thirty days for which the 66 masses had been directed, and thus, as the abbot sums up the inci"dent, it appeared very clearly that the brother had been delivered “from punishment by the saving power of the Host (quia frater qui de‘functus fuerat, per salutarum hostiam, evasit suppliciem”). And that this was the intended purpose of the story is also evident from the title of the chapter in which it is given (ch. 55), which sets forth that its subject is to show what may be done after death to aid souls in obtaining absolution; but the good Pope seems wholly oblivious of the fact that it is equally an evidence, if believed, of the frightful nature of a power which can thus visit appalling miseries by the will, even the mere caprice of a man, on souls beyond the grave. It was, in reality, the terrors of this power, and its constant exercise by the clergy, that gave its chief importance to the doctrine of sacramental absolution.

"Catechism of Trent," Donovan's Translation (Roman Catholic),

remains there till the measure of its suffering has equaled the amount of its "temporal penalties" yet "unsatisfied," or these have been liquidated, and hence terminated through the acts appointed for that purpose by the Church on earth.

The means which are thus available for the release of a soul from its purgatorial torments are chiefly masses purchased in sufficient number by living pious friends, and indulgences granted by the Pope, or through means or persons to whom he has committed the authority for their dispensation.

So that under this enlargement of the sphere of the Church's authority the life of man here and hereafter was all in the grasp of what had thus become the tremendous power of excommunicating and absolving by the priesthood.

The efficiency of the whole system, so far as its power over the members of the Church was concerned, lay in the universal obligation which was imposed on every member of the Church by the Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215) to confess in private to his priest, and in the doctrine that was connected with it (which was fully elaborated and made an article of faith by the Canon and decrees of Trent, Ses. XIV, ch. 5, Canon 6) that there was no deliverance from the awful penalty of mortal sin save by this private confession to a priest, and his official and sacramental absolution conveyed in the authoritative words, "I absolve thee."

In treating of the doctrine thus set forth by the Council, the Catechism of Trent says that "confession is a sacramental accusation of one's self made with a view of obtaining pardon by virtue of the