had often given the kiss of peace in so distressing a situation, fell on their knees along with him; and the minister, in the same attitude of prostration, laying his hands on the head of the penitent, supplicated, with solemn fervour, the divine compassion on him, and then raising him, placed him in the ranks of the faithful at the table of the communion.

§ 7. OF PRIVATE PENANCE.

ROMAN Catholic writers define public penance to be such as relates to notorious offences, and is performed only before the church; private penance relates to sins confessed only to a priest, for which satisfaction is privately performed. It is private penance, thus closely connected with the practice of auricular confession, which has been exalted to the rank of a sacrament in the church of Rome. No precedent or other authority in favour of this practice can be found in the New Testament. James v. 16, relates to a mutual confession of sins, and demands no more confession of the people to a priest, than of a priest to the people. The Roman Catholics, abandoning this passage, contend, however, that auricular confession is founded on Scripture, inasmuch as it is a natural and necessary accompaniment of the power of forgiving sins, which they suppose to have been vested in the apostles, Matt. xviii. 18; xvi. 19; John xx. 23. Such is the position maintained by the Council of Trent, (Sess. xiv. c. 3-6:) the unsoundness of which has been, however, abundantly proved.

The more acute and judicious controversialists on the Romish side, betake themselves to the authority of the fathers in this matter; claiming Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, and others, as bearing witness to the existence of private confession in their days. But it is found, upon examination, that the έouoλóynois, or confessio, to which they allude, is quite another thing —such, in fact, as has been already described; a point which is fully conceded by a celebrated Roman Catholic antiquarian, Gabriel Albaspinæus. The truth is, that the ancient writers speak of Couoλóynois only in the sense of confession of sin to Almighty God, or as denoting public penance; the whole exercise, in the latter case, being denominated from its introductory part. Concerning the former kind of confession, the fathers teach expressly that it is to be made only to God, and not by any means to man, whether to the whole church or to individual ministers. It is wholly unconnected

with any thing in the shape of satisfaction or penalty; its only necessary accompaniment being repentance or contrition, with purpose of amendment. The other kind of confession related, as has been. already explained, to those open or notorious offences, on account of which a member of the church had been excluded from her communion; and it was required as a preparatory step in order to a restoration to ecclesiastical privileges. And together with this, we may rank the public confession of previous sins which was required as one of the preliminaries of baptism; allusion to which is made by some of the earliest ecclesiastical writers.

During the Decian persecution, the number of penitents being very large, the bishop deemed it expedient to appoint certain presbyters to the especial office of receiving their confessions preparatory to public penance; it having been already recommended, as a wholesome practice, that persons suffering under any perplexities of mind or troubles of conscience, should have recourse to some wise and skilful pastor for their guidance and satisfaction. The appointment of these penitentiary priests may be regarded as having led the way to the institution of confessors, in the modern acceptation of the term. But those officers were by no means identical, and ought not to be confounded with each other. The office of the penitentiary priests "was not to receive private confessions in prejudice to the public discipline; much less to grant absolution privately upon bare confession before any penance was performed, which was a practice altogether unknown to the ancient church;but it was to facilitate and promote the exercise of public discipline, by acquainting men what sins the laws of the church required to be expiated by public penance, and how they were to behave themselves in the performance of it; and only to appoint private penance for such private crimes as were not proper to be brought upon the public stage, either for fear of doing harm to the penitent himself, or giving scandal to the church." The confession of sins was indeed private; but it was destined to be made public in order to the performance of penance. The private or auricular confession of later centuries is quite different from the confession made to those penitentiary presbyters. Confession was not made to them with a view of obtaining forgiveness from God, but in order to procure restoration to the former privileges of the offended church. It was considered, indeed, useful and necessary to seek for both kinds of forgiveness at the same time; but no Christian minister claimed the power of pronouncing pardon in the name of God."

The manner of conducting this private penance at Rome, and the scandalous abuse of it at Constantinople, which caused it to be discontinued in the Eastern church, is related by Sozemen." It is a palpable illustration of the abuses to which the confessional of the Roman Catholic church may be perverted. "There is a place appropriated to the reception of penitents, where they stand and mourn until the completion of the solemn services, from which they are excluded; then they cast themselves, with groans and lamentations, prostrate on the ground. The bishop conducts the ceremony, sheds tears, and prostrates himself in like manner; and all the people burst into tears, and groan aloud. Afterward, the bishop rises from the ground, and raises up the others; he offers prayer on behalf of the penitents, and then dismisses them. Each of the penitents subjects himself in private to voluntary suffering, either by fastings, by abstaining from the bath, or from divers kinds of meats, or by other prescribed means, until a certain period appointed by the bishop. When this time arrives he is made free from the consequences of his sin, and is permitted to resume his place in the assemblies of the church. The Roman priests have carefully observed this custom from the beginning to the present time. At Constantinople, a presbyter was always appointed to preside over the penitents until a lady of illustrious birth made a deposition to the effect, that when she resorted as a penitent to the presbyter, to fast, and offer supplications to God, and tarried for that purpose in the church, a rape had been committed on her person by the deacon. Great displeasure was manifested by the people when this occurrence was made known to them, on account of the discredit that would result to the church, and the priests, in particular, were thereby greatly scandalized. Nectarius, after much hesitation as to what means ought to be adopted, deposed the deacon; and at the advice of certain persons, who urged the necessity of leaving each individual to examine himself before participating in the sacred mysteries, he abolished the office of the presbyter presiding over penance. From that period, therefore, the peformance of penance fell into disuse."

6

The regular establishment of the system of private confession and absolution is usually ascribed to Leo the Great, who represented not merely any particular penitentiary priests, but every priest, as possessing the power and authority to receive confession, to act as an intercessor with God on behalf of the penitent, and to declare forgiveness of sins in the name of God. But even the

system introduced by this pontiff differed from that which has prevailed since the thirteenth century in the Roman church, inasmuch as the confession of sins was left to every one's own conscience, and penance was still regarded as an entirely voluntary act, which no one could be compelled to perform; nor was the priest supposed to possess in himself any (delegated) power of forgiving sins. And subsequently to the age of Leo, it was considered as a matter quite at the option of an offender either to confess his sins to a priest or to God alone.

§ 8. OF ABSOLUTION.

No writer of the first three centuries of the Christian era makes mention of power or authority on the part of priest or bishop to forgive sin in the place of God. Tertullian, Cyprian, Chrysostom, and Ambrose, insist on the truth, that none but God alone can forgive sin; but Augustin, who survived the last two but a few years, asserts that the church has this power.* Gregory the Great, †A. D. 604, fully claims for the bishops this high prerogative.† In the church of Rome, absolution was exalted to the rank of a sacrament, administered by a power delegated immediately from God.

The form of the absolution was at first in the strain of supplication. The offices of the priest were supposed to be those of an intercessor for the penitent. From this mediatorial office of intercessor, the transition was to that of vicegerent of God! A sinful man assumes to have received the awful prerogative of God himself to forgive at his will the sins of men. "I absolve thee from all thy sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen." Such was the form of absolution from the twelfth century.

Shocking as is this blasphemy, it seems to be only the natural result of that central error of prelacy, now so zealously propagated by a portion even of the protestant church-the idea of a priesthood serving as a medium of connection between Christ and his church, through which the influences of the Holy Spirit are imparted to the church. The apostolic succession, the grace of the sacraments, baptismal regeneration, the grace of confirmation by the laying on

* Nec eos audiamus qui negant ecclesiam Dei omnia peccata pose dimittere. † Mediator enim Dei et hominum, homo Jesus Christus, hanc præpositis ecclesiæ tradidit potestatem ut confitentibus actionem pœnitentiæ darent, et eosdem salubri satisfactione purgatos ad communionem sacramentorum per januam reconciliationis admitterent.-Ep. 59, ul. 46.

of hands of the bishop, the power of the keys to loose and to bind in heaven-these were the stages by which the Pope of Rome advanced to that culminating point of episcopal prerogatives, where he as God, sitteth in the temple of God, blasphemously dispensing at will absolution or hopeless perdition to a sinful creature like himself.

§ 9. DISCIPLINE OF THE CLERGY, AND THE PUNISHMENT OF DELINQUENTS.

THE stern and severe sanctity of the primitive Christians is peculiarly manifest in the severity of that discipline to which they subjected offending members of their communion. The rules of discipline in relation to the clergy are a part of the polity of the hierarchy.

The clergy, however, of every grade, were at first the subjects of a discipline peculiar to their body; and in some respects even more severe than that of private members of the church. The latter might, by suitable demonstrations of penitence, be again restored to their former standing; but this privilege was never accorded to a degraded or excommunicated minister. If, for any offence, he once fell under ecclesiastical censure, he was excluded from the clerical order entirely and for ever. But the higher orders soon found means of relieving themselves from the severity of this discipline, and of applying it to subjugate the inferior orders. The practical effect of this peculiar discipline, which, according to Planck, began in the fourth century, was to exalt the office of the bishop, and often to subject the other orders of the clergy to a humiliating degradation according to his whim or caprice. It was a crafty policy which completed the subjection of the clergy to the bishop.

The offences for which a clergyman was liable to censure or punishment were very numerous, and continually increased as the spirit of ancient Christianity degenerated and gave place to the ostentatious formalities of later times. They may, however, be comprised under the following classes: apostasy, heresy, simony, neglect of duty of any kind, especially departure from the prescribed forms of worship; and open immorality.

Many of these offences evidently related to the peculiar trials to which the primitive Christians were subject, and to the heresies and defections which were consequent upon them. Offences of this character were visited with peculiar severity upon the clergy.

The punishments inflicted upon offending members of the clerical body from the fourth to the seventh or eighth centuries, may be re