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Greek and Latin languages prevailed throughout the greatest part of the known world. If other languages have been formed out of them, with a heterogeneous mixture of barbarous dialects, that surely is not a reason to induce the church to alter its liturgy with the ever-shifting forms of human speech. As to the practice of the Jews, let the catechist again be admonished, that from the Babylonish captivity to the coming of Christ, they, by his connivance and the sanction of his presence, had their service, hot in the vulgar tongue, but in the ancient Hebrew1.

III. When the catechist asserts, that the practice of the Catholic church is so unwarrantable, as to call for the blame of the wisest of her members, I positively charge him with stating what is not true.

IV. When he affirms, that the people ought to know what they do in the worship of God, I reply that this end is fully accomplished by the directions given to the pastors of the church on the subject2.

V. The same remark is a complete answer to the difficulties contained in the fifth number.

VI. The reasons given for the practice are found in the preceding observations; and instead of betraying either guilt or error, as the

See the preceding observations.
See again the preceding observations.

catechist injuriously affirms, they will be found to be replete with sense and discretion, and agreeable to the discipline of the Jews, in the days of our Redemer, who by his presence gave weight to the established custom.

QUESTION XX.

Why do not you think Auricular Confession to a Priest necessary to salvation?

ANSWER.

We are not against confessing to a minister, in the church of England; nay, our church presses it, both public and private, to God chiefly, and to a pious and able divine, if the conscience be burdened, and particularly upon a sick or death-bed, and before receiving the Sacrament; but we dare not say, as they do in the church of Rome, that a man cannot be pardoned or saved, except he confesses to a priest all his mortal sins, with their circumstances, for these reasons, 1. Because there is nothing in the word of God that makes the neglect of such a confession damnable.`

2. The word of God tells us, that God forgives sins upon true contrition, but says nothing of confession to a priest, that it is always to attend contrition.

3. Though confession was used in the primitive church, yet that confession was made by scandalous sinners in the public congregation, and therefore is not the same with that practised this day in the Roman church.

4. They make this confession a Sacrament, or a principal part of the Sacrament of Penance, in the church of Rome; but a Sacrament it cannot be, because it wants Christ's institution.

5. About six hundred years ago, this confession was not thought necessary to salvation, even in the church of Rome, and there is no inspiration since to make it so.

6. The place, John xx. 23, upon which the stress of the necessity of this confession is laid, imports no such thing. Confession is not so much as mentioned there.

7. This confession, as it is managed in the church of Rome, is a mere formality, but gives no check to sin.

OBSERVATIONS.

In treating the subject of confession, the catechist appears to labour under the pressure of contradictory and jarring ideas. The leading object of the question is to prove that confession is not necessary to salvation; still he has no objection to the practice, however painful and humiliating to nature: on one side, he disdains the ministry of the Catholic priest, who derives his authority from those, that can prove their connexion with Christ and his apostles; while, on the other, he accepts the services of a minister of the Anglican church, who can trace his connexion no higher than to the civil power of the realm. As an obedient member of the church of England, he must also admit, that our Lord Jesus Christ hath left power in his church to absolve all sinners who truly repent; he must consequently acknowledge the validity of the absolution pronounced by the minister over the sick person, who has made a confession; yet with a glorious inconsistency, which sets even ridicule at defiance, he is obliged to believe, at least exteriorly to profess, that penance, including confession, is not a sacrament grounded upon divine authority, but a mere ceremony, an unavailing formality, which may be omitted at pleasure 1.

'Compare the Visitation of the Sick, in the Common Prayer Book, with the 25th Article.

R

That penance is a sacrament we have already shown, when we demonstrated the existence of seven sacraments; and of this no rational inquirer can entertain a doubt, even from the admission recorded in the book of Common Prayer. It is there solemnly asserted1, that our Redeemer has left in his church a power of remitting sin by the ministry of the priest, who pronounces the words of absolution over the repenting sinner. Now such an admission is a clear acknowledgment of the existence of penance as a sacrament. For what understand we by a sacrament, but a sacred sign, or an external rite, to which internal grace is annexed, by the positive institution of Christ himself? To admit, therefore, the remission of sin by the ministry of the priest, and at the same time to deny the existence of the sacrament, by which sin is so remitted, forms such a palpable contradiction, as the ingenuity of man can never unravel.

We

That the confession of sin to a priest forms an essential part of this sacrament, is demonstratively evident from its very nature and properties, and from the terms in which it is established. have only to recur to the mode, in which our Redeemer conveyed the knowledge of this celebrated institution: He first promised to establish a method of opening the kingdom of Heaven to those,

1 Loc. cit.

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