the Cup they tell us, may be drank of immoderately, may be spilled, many dreadful inconveniencies may happen from trusting it with the laity. Now it is strange our Saviour should not be wise enough to foresee these inconveniencies: it is strange we should not experience them neither: and it adds to the wonder not a little, that the whole Church of Christ, for 1200 years, should not be able to find them out any more than we. For in all that time, the cup was constantly given to the laity in their public communions, though there are some instances, yet neither many, nor early ones, in which the bread alone was carried to private houses. And when some of the laity, for absurd reasons, refused to take the cup, no less than three Popes condemned them. But superstitious imaginations gradually increasing amongst Christians, a custom arose first of giving the bread dipt in wine instead of both separate, and at last in the 15th century the council of Constance, the same which decreed so honestly, that promises made to the prejudice of the Catholic faith ought not to be kept*, decreed also very modestly, that notwithstanding (for so they express it) our Saviour administered both kinds, one only shall be administered for the future to the laity. And now it is made an article of their Creed, that the whole Sacrament is given by giving this part: so that whoever shall say both are necessary, (which, if it be not a truth, one should think could not be a heresy,) is by the council of Trent pronounced accursed.

Another difference between the Church of Rome and ours with respect to the Sacrament is this. They hold that, as often as it is celebrated, Christ is truly and properly offered up a sacrifice for our sins.

* See Courayer's Council of Trent, Vol. i. p. 595.

Now we acknowledge, that every act of obedience and of worship more especially, may, agreeably to the language of Scripture, be spoken of as a sacrifice to our Maker: that his creatures of bread and wine, when appropriated to this solemn act of religion, are so far offerings to God: that this whole act, being a memorial and representation of the sacrifice of Christ, may fitly enough be called by the same name with what it commemorates and represents: so that in this sense Christians have an altar and an offering upon it. But that, instead of a representative sacrifice of praise, it should be a real sacrifice of atonement, in which Christ's body, literally speaking, is every day offered up anew, of this we can see neither proof nor possibility. For not only it supposes transubstantiation to be true, which hath been proved to be false; but it is absolutely inconsistent with two whole chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews; the ninth and tenth; which throughout inculcate that Christ was not to be offered up often, for then must he often have suffered; but that he appeared once to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself; was once offered to bear the sins of many; and by this one offering hath for ever perfected them that are sanctified. If therefore our doctrine be heretical in this point, St. Paul's is so too: not to speak of the primitive Christians; who, though they often called this ordinance a sacrifice, yet, by calling it an unbloody one, shew they did not think the blood of Christ was literally offered up in it; and by frequently saying they had indeed no sacrifices, prove themselves to look on this only as a figurative one.

But now from this notion of a daily atonement thus made, I shall proceed to their other doctrines concerning the forgiveness of sins. And here they hold,

!

that a particular absolution from a Priest is necessary, if it can be had, for the pardon of every mortal sin, i. e. every sin by which any person without repentance forfeits his title to Heaven: and that a particular confession of every material circumstance of every such sin, is necessary for absolution. And the practice of these things they apprehend to give their Church an unspeakable advantage over ours.

The necessity of such absolution they plead for from our Saviour's words to his Apostles: Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, shall be bound in Heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in Heaven*. Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained. Now certainly these words did not put it in the power of the Apostles themselves, to pardon or refuse to pardon whom they pleased, right or wrong. They could use the keys of the kingdom of Heaven no further than he saw fit, who openeth, and no man shutteth: who shutteth, and no man openeth ‡. Yet the Apostles had great powers by virtue of these words, which we have not: the power of discerning by the spirit, in many cases at least, and therefore of declaring, who were penitent and pardoned, who otherwise the power of inflicting and continuing miraculous punishments, on wicked persons, which is binding and retaining their sins; and of removing such punishments, which is losing and remitting them. But these things the Romish Clergy can no more claim than we. What then besides can there be conveyed by these words of our Lord? A power of preaching that Gospel, according to the terms of which alone, the sins of men shall be forgiven or punished; a power of admitting persons into a state + Rev. iii. 7.

Matth. xviii. 18.

+ John xx. 23.

of forgiveness by Baptism, of administering to them the word of God and the holy Sacrament, as means of grace; of denouncing his wrath against all sinners, interceding with him for all penitents, and pronouncing in his name that he pardons and absolves them. These things, we trust, are done much more faithfully by us than them. There is indeed another power, of exercising spiritual discipline for the honour of the Church and the sake of example, to distinguish so far as men are able between the good, by admitting them to Communion with us, and the bad, by excluding them from it. In this we acknowledge that we are deficient: but they are worse: for they have utterly perverted it from a public institution of general use and influence, to a secret transaction between a sinner and his confessor, in which not only such absolution is made necessary, as the Scripture hath no where required, but such confession insisted on as is no way needful to it. Not needful from any command of God: for the chief and almost only text they plead for that purpose, Confess your faults one to another *, no more obliges the people in all cases to reveal the particulars of their sins to the Priest, than the Priest to reveal the particulars of his to the people. Nor is it needful from the nature of the thing; for it is not knowing a person's sins that can qualify the Priest to give him absolution, but knowing he hath repented of them: which is just as possible to be known without a particular confession, as with it.

Still in many cases acknowledging the errors of our lives, and opening the state of our souls to the ministers of God's word, for their opinion, their advice, and their prayers, may be extremely useful, sometimes

* James v. 16.

necessary. And whenever persons think it so, we are ready both to hear them with the utmost secresy, and to assist them with our best care: to direct them how they may be forgiven, if we think they are not; to pronounce them forgiven, if we think they are. Only we must beg them to remember, that none but God can pardon sins as to their consequences in another world. Men indeed may take off from sinners the censures of the Church if they have incurred them; but as to any thing farther, all we can do is either to pray to God that he would forgive them, (which was the only form of absolution till the eleventh century at least) or else to declare that he hath done so. And let such a declaration express ever so positively that either God or the Priest absolves them, it is a fatal error to build hopes on this, with respect to another life, any further than conditionally, that if their repentance be sufficient, their forgiveness is certain. But whether it be sufficient or no, the Priests of our Church can give their judgment, and those of the Church of Rome can possibly do no more. For they must own themselves to be as fallible as we are.

But as neither reason nor Scripture makes confessions and absolution of this kind necessary, so neither did the primitive Church hold it to be so. Public confession indeed they required in cases of public scandal: but for private confession in all cases it was never thought of as a command of God for 900 years after Christ, nor determined to be such till after 1200: when the same Council of Lateran decreed it, which decreed also the deposing of such princes as would not extirpate heresy. And yet it is amazing what stress they now lay upon it. No repentance, they tell us, will avail, if it be neglected: and almost