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keys" (Buckley's Translation, p. 278), and goes on to enforce the necessity of its use for salvation by the illustration that "as no one can gain admittance to a place without the aid of him to whom the keys have been committed, so again no one can gain admission into heaven unless its gates be opened by the priests to whose fidelity the Lord has confided its keys" (Buckley's Translation, p. 281).

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Such were the chief elements of the mediæval doctrine of confession and absolution at the time of the Reformation. It was in most of its principles and in all of its practice a wide and irreconcilable departure from the teachings of the Scriptures and the early ages of the Church. In the strong language of Bishop Hopkins,' it" was without a vestige of Apostolic or "primitive sanction, and was rather to be regarded as a system of delusion, perilous to the conscience of the pastor and dangerous to the souls of his flock" (p. 243); and yet with all its evils it had been urged so zealously in all the teachings of the clergy that no part of the sacerdotal theology had more hold on the minds of the people in those superstitious ages than this. It was, as the Bishop truly declares, “in favor of priestly despotism," "by it the power of every priest was fastened upon the soul and conscience of his "trembling suppliants" (p. 241), and while it remained intact any hope of permanent reform in the Church, and a return to the ancient and Scriptural teachings on the right means of obtaining forgiveness from God, would prove ill-founded.

1 "The History of the Confessional," by John Henry Hopkins, D.D., Bishop of the Diocese of Vermont, 1850, pp. 243, 241.

The revisers of the English services, at this period, fully measured the nature of the evil with which they had to deal, and they realized also that there was a need of the greatest caution, lest they might root up the wheat while cutting out the thorns, which were here so certainly "choking it."

Hence they made no direct assault, in terms, against this system, which might have provoked bitterness of response from those who held to the dominant theology, they even preserved in certain connections1 some of the formulæ on which it had laid much stress; but by the simple process of leaving each person free to confess to God or to a minister, in public and as part of the service or in private if he felt this helpful, and by also making both the confession and the forgiveness in the one case as complete and as effective as the other, the whole priestly system was left utterly null and powerless as a system of coercion and a means of sacerdotal domination, and the primitive and Catholic principle that the only confession necessary was that made to God alone, or in the mode appointed in the

1 This spirit is especially manifest in the retention in the English Office of the Visitation of the Sick of the positive expression, "I absolve thee," of which Bishop Hopkins speaks with great regret, calling it “this modern form of absolution,” and adding (p. 242), “I cannot but lament that our noble reformers of England suffered it to remain in any part of their established offices, notwithstanding they only allowed it to be used at the earnest desire of individuals whose minds might be depressed by the weight of some especial sin."

It was, doubtless, a like feeling with this of Bishop Hopkins that led our revisers in 1789 to omit it altogether from the American Visitation Office, and either to reject or qualify the term absolution by the phrase, "a declaration," etc., wherever it has been retained in any of our offices. See Hopkins, p. 269.

Church's public service was again established in its stead.

The first step taken in the revision of the Liturgy, after the death of Henry VIII, settled the whole matter on essentially the same basis as it has ever since. remained. In 1548 a short addition in English was appended to the Latin Mass, providing for the Communion in both kinds of the laity; a part of this beautiful office was "a general confession to be made in the name of all who are minded to receive the Holy Communion," etc., and after this confession the priest, turning to the people, says, "Our blessed Lord, who hath left power to His Church to absolve penitent sinners from their sins, etc., pardon you," etc.

This was designed to be, and to be used, as a full and perfect substitute for the whole scheme of individual confession to a priest and personal, authoritative absolution by him.

And that there might be no doubt of this, the priest was required to read an exhortation to the people at least one day before each Communion, which said that "if a f any one lacked comfort or counsel he might come to him, or some other discreet priest, and receive comfort and absolution," adding, however, that those who were "satisfied with a general confession should not be offended with those who use the secret confession to a priest," and those who preferred to open their sins to a priest should not take offence at others "who were satisfied with humble confession to God."

Dixon says of this (Vol. II, p. 495): "In antiquity "the confessions (or apologiæ) in the Mass were said "secretly by the priest and added to the clerical char

"acter of the service," and "this was the first open "stroke that was made by authority against secret or "auricular confession."

It was, indeed, all that he asserts; but it was far more. It was an utter and intended repudiation of the whole sacerdotal system of confession and absolution, and was recognized as such.

That system held to the positive necessity for salvation of private confession and personal, authoritative absolution, the English office declared that neither was required; the priestly legislation imposed it as an universal obligation, to be enforced by penalty, for every person to confess at certain intervals to his priest, the revised form demanded only that he who choose to do this should not be molested by those who did not go; the medieval priest, as a judge having authority, utters the positive pardon, “I absolve thee," the English service, as the primitive Church and the Church all over the world for twelve hundred years had done, asked in prayer for pardon to the penitent, and believed God's promise for its answer, that they who came repentant, confessing unto God their sins, would go away forgiven.

In the year following (1549) the book containing all the revised offices of the Church in their English form was issued, and was established as "The Book of the Common Prayer, etc., etc., of The Church of England.” In this the Mass service was, like all the others, reformed in accordance with the principles on which the whole revision was conducted, and became the "Holy Communion" order of the English Church; the short appendix to the Mass of 1548 was incorporated into this

office of 1549, and hence the matter of confession was left substantially, with only some slight verbal alterations, as it had been first presented in 1548.

But in the second revision, that of 1552, there were some noticeable changes in this as on many other points not, indeed, in any of the principles involved, for these were maintained the same as they had been set forth from the beginning, but in the part of the public service and in the mode in which the subject was treated.

The Communion office still retained a “general confession," etc., and had a prayer for pardon, in the ancient form, as a true absolution following it. In the exhortation, with which the Communion is announced, any one who "cannot quiet his own conscience" is told that he may come to me or some other discreet "minister of God's Word, that he may receive such ghostly counsel, etc., etc., as his conscience may be "relieved, and that by the ministry of God's Word he "may receive comfort and the benefit of absolution." There is no mention, however, here or elsewhere in this office, of any such general or customary use of "auricular confession," as seems to be implied in the language of 1548 and 1549.

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But in lieu of any reference to the subject of auricular confession in the Communion office, the whole matter was now transferred to the daily services, and in presenting it there the position of the Church of England is declared with definite and unmistakable clearness on the whole doctrine of "sacramental confessions," and thus, virtually, on all the conclusions which the sacerdotal theology had built upon or included in it.

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