What is auricular confession?

The principal passages of scripture adduced by Romanists on this subject, are — "Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed." .... "Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." (James 5:16; John 20:23) The first of these passages evidently refers to the mutual confession of faults on the part of Christians; and the second to church discipline, but neither certainly to the secret confession of sins into the ear of a priest, with the view of receiving absolution. The duty, or privilege, of confession must be admitted by all, Protestants as well as Catholics; but the question is, to whom ought we to confess? To a priest, or to God? Numerous passages might be quoted, from both the Old and New Testaments, to prove that confession of sin is to be made to God. Take one from each. "And Joshua said unto Achan, My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession unto him; and tell me now what thou hast done; hide it not from me." .... "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (Joshua 7:19; 1 John 1:8-9)

But the form of confession prescribed by the Romish church to be used by every penitent at the confessional will best show us its real character. He must kneel down at the side of his confessor, and make the sign of the cross, saying, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, "I confess to Almighty God, to the blessed Mary, ever virgin, to blessed Michael the archangel, to blessed John Baptist, to the holy apostles Peter, and Paul, to all the saints, and to you, my ghostly father, that I have sinned exceedingly, in thought, word, and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault." At this point of the ceremony the penitent specifies his several sins in their details, without evasion or equivocation; the most indelicate or the most diabolical are poured into the ear of the priest, whatever he may be. We know what many of them have been. When the priest has satisfied himself with details, the penitent goes on — "Therefore I beseech the blessed Mary, ever virgin, the blessed Michael the archangel, blessed John Baptist, the holy apostles Peter and Paul, and all the saints, and you, my ghostly father, to pray to our Lord God for me. I am heartily sorry, purpose amendment for the future, and most humbly ask pardon of God, and penance and absolution of you, my ghostly father."*

The penitent is now in the hands, and entirely at the mercy of the priest. He may prescribe the most unreasonable penance, or delay his absolution until his own evil ends are gained. But there we must leave them, and briefly notice, under the head of Roman Theology, the kindred dogma of

102 The history of confession I have already given. Auricular confession is a very modern introduction; it was needed when an easy way of letting off sin was wanted coincidently with the growth of priestly power. The passage of James, "Confess your sins one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed," is the plain proof that confession to a priest was unknown. It was a useful mutual exercise of charity, so that chastisement might be removed, when the heart was right before God. Was it to priests that many came and confessed their deeds in the passage cited from the Acts, when they burned their books of magic? The reason why baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is valid, and "I absolve thee from thy sins, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" is not, is a very simple one; it is this — Christ positively ordained one, and did not so much as hint at the other. Besides, you know very well that in case of necessity a layman, nay, a woman, can baptize a child: will you allow the same power in penance? If not, why do you assimilate them, as if one proved the other?

You quote St. Chrysostom. But he wrote urgently against confession to a priest, as we have already seen. I do not deny that Christ gave power to His church to forgive sins in the sense I have explained it. I believe it to be a glorious truth, that whosoever is rightly in the church is enjoying the absolute, full, unlimited, forgiveness of all his sins. But we are talking of auricular confession to a priest, and of satisfaction and penance substituted for real full contrition, in order to have it.

The history of this innovation is not easily traced, neither is it necessary for our purpose. The question of private confession, and of priestly absolution, had often been discussed by the theologians, but no definite law on the subject was laid down by the church till the beginning of the thirteenth century. In the year 1215, under the pontificate of Innocent III., the practice of auricular confession was authoritatively enjoined by the fourth Council of Lateran upon the faithful of both sexes at least once a year. From that time, down to the present day, it has been considered a positive divine ordinance in the church of Rome. It is also practised in the Greek and Coptic churches.

Auricular Confession

The sacraments of the church of Rome being considered necessary to spiritual life, and at the disposal of the priesthood, necessarily gave them enormous power. But none of its many sacraments tended to increase the influence of the priests, or to enslave and lower the morality of the people more than auricular confession. From the Emperor to the peasant the whole heart of every man and woman belonging to the church of Rome was laid open to the priest. No act scarcely a thought, at least in the dark ages. was kept a secret from the father confessor. To conceal or disguise the truth was a sin to be punished with the most humiliating penance, or, it might be, with the pains of hell for ever. Before a power so arbitrary, so irresponsible, so dreaded who did not tremble? The priests thus became a kind of spiritual police, to whom every man was bound to inform against himself. They knew the secrets of all persons, of all families, of all governments, of all societies, and, of course how to rule and lay their plans so as to accomplish whatever they pleased. The conscience, the moral as well as the religious or spiritual being of man, were in their power. It was like the seal and consummation of all wickedness and blasphemy. Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, masters and servants, were all under their secret, but real supervision and control.

Hence, fourthly, they resort to a sacrament of penance to meet sins after baptism, and they urge "contrition" as its condition, that is, not only hatred of the sins but desire to make reparation or atonement for them, proportionate to the crimes it effaces. Now as few could hope to attain such an end, they pretend that God eases the difficulty by giving the keys of the kingdom to the church, and thus opening the gate of heaven to those who, not truly contrite, have only reached "attrition." Penance, therefore, is a deliberate device of Romanism to give absolution where there is confession without due repentance or contrition. Nor was auricular confession established till the fourth Lateran Council (1215), when Innocent III. had it imposed as an article of faith. For previously, though confession of sins was held to be a duty, it was left open to do so to God alone or to a priest also. The new development was by the usual fiction declared to be the church's faith from the beginning. So they say of all their peculiar dogmas, no matter how recent they be as articles of faith, nor how loudly their highest authorities are known to have once rejected them. More barefaced deceit than in Romanism it were hard to imagine.

231 As regards confession, Dr. Manning says, "Whose sins ye forgive, they are forgiven. Where is the church which practises confession as inculcated by these words? Confession is not inculcated, that I see, in the words at all. The Catholic church, he assures us, never relaxed this practice, because it never lost its faith. Now confession to a priest was never made obligatory till 1215 years after Christ, in the Third Council of Lateran, under the Pope under whose auspices the Inquisition was established. History shews it was not in any way usually practised. There was public confession before the whole church, and sometimes voluntary confession to a presbyter, where a person was so disposed. At Constantinople a presbyter was appointed to receive it, if any one was disposed to make one. But a great scandal arising from a confession thus made, Chrysostom abolished it, and told people to confess to God. At first there was only confession before the whole church, obligatory when they were excommunicated and they stood as penitents. Voluntary confessions began soon to be made in private. At Rome it was only under Leo the Great, in the latter part of the fifth century, that offenders were relieved from public confession and allowed to confess to a priest. Could Dr. Manning be ignorant of all this?

4th. John 20:19-23. We now come to the scripture, on which the argument is chiefly based for authority for confession to the priests. “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted to them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” It is assumed that these words were addressed to the apostles as such: and power thus given to them, as apostles: as the guardians of the church; and after them, to their successors. If this be so, the confessional is established beyond a doubt. If this is not so, the whole theory of the confessional is clearly a mistake, so far as this scripture goes. The question is this, who are meant, or included in the pronoun “ye.” “Whose soever sins ye remit,” &c. It is easy to assert anything, and common for those ignorant of the scripture to accept the assertion. We shall find the matter quite clear, if we carefully examine the context of the words of the Lord.

The practice of confession further fastened on the laity more fully the power of the priest. By it the priest became the depository of the innermost secrets of the penitent. The priest was instructed to ask the most searching questions, the tendency of which was to corrupt the mind of the penitent, informing them of sexual and other sins, the nature of which was unknown to many. It can be amply proved that the confessional has helped multitudes to spiritual ruin.

At the end of confession the priest professes to give absolution, or the forgiveness of sins, daringly and blasphemously taking the place of God Himself, who alone can forgive sin. So daring was this claim that Richard Wilkins, a Roman Catholic priest, wrote:

Thus if we take scripture, we do not find in this great commission of Christ, a word about confessing to a priest: but remission of sins through preaching the glad tidings.

A Commission. — Repeating the salutation, "Peace be to you," and the reality of His resurrection now apprehended, the Lord acquainted them with a commission with which He would entrust them: "As My Father has sent Me, even so send I you" (20:21). In His prayer to His Father He had spoken of a mission to the world which would be fruitful in results. And in view of that, as gathering power would be manifested, and the number of His adherents be increased, He here breathed on them, "saying, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit [or, forgive], they are remitted [or, forgiven] to them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained" (22, 23). Was this communication the gift of the Spirit, spoken of in John 7:39; 14:17, 26; 15:26; 16:7-13? No. For the Lord in Acts 1:4, at a date subsequent to that of which John here writes, told His disciples that they were still to wait for the promise of the Father. What then was this of which the Lord spoke? The context makes plain. He was communicating of His Spirit to the company to act for Him upon earth, when He should have left it; empowering them thereby to receive and to reject any who would join them professedly as believers. As such were received to their company, they were forgiven their sins. Their past history, their acts, their ways, before conversion were not to be remembered against them. They were forgiven. So Paul, the former persecutor of the Church, was received by believers at Damascus. His sins were forgiven. And those at Jerusalem, when assured of his conversion, never, we may be certain, cast up to him his former ways, grievously though he may once have injured some of them. It was administrative forgiveness. Who can forgive sins but God only (Mark 2:7) is indeed true in an absolute sense. No fellow-sinner can blot out the sins of another before God. That is a matter solely for God. He has never delegated jurisdiction in that to any individual. It is a domain in which no creature has power or authority. The blood of Christ, too, alone cleanses from all sin.

Administrative Forgiveness. — But what is called administrative forgiveness is a power entrusted by the Lord to the Assembly to exercise on earth. This may be called for either on the occasion of receiving individuals into fellowship at the Lord's Table, or on that of restoring one who has been put away in the exercise of discipline. Of this last Paul wrote to the Corinthians concerning the offending brother: "To whom ye forgive anything, I forgive also: for what I also have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ" (2 Cor 2:10). The Assembly at Corinth would forgive the brother, and would show it by restoring him to Christian fellowship. On that occasion it was a question of restoration to communion with the saints on earth. In our Gospel it is the question of receiving into fellowship. But in neither case would administrative forgiveness be rightly called for, till forgiveness on the part of God had been first accorded to the individual. In neither case would it be a substitute for this last. The passage in this Gospel (20:23), we would add, is the only authority from the Lord to receive people to the Table, as that in Matt. 18:17-18, is the scriptural authority from the Lord Himself to bind and to loose in connection with the exercise of discipline. The reader will perceive the difference between these passages, as he marks, that in John's the forgiving is mentioned before the retaining, in Matt. 18 the binding precedes the loosing. Of retaining sins we have an instance in the case of Simon Magus, whom Peter, detecting his spirit, refused to accredit as a Christian. He was still in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity (Acts 8:21-23). The disciples had now seen the Lord. And from this time the first day of the week became the recognised meeting day for Christians. Jews met on the Sabbath. Christians felt constrained to meet on the first day of the week.