confession; and I request the reader to look at it again, and to take his Bible, and read the passage in its connexion, and he will find that there is not a word of confession in it. The remitting, or retaining of sins here, is connected with the gift of the Holy Ghost, under whose divine influence the apostles, as ambassadors of Christ, were authorized to proclaim the forgiveness or remission of sins, to all who should receive the testimony concerning Christ; and in the same authoritative manner, to declare the everlasting perdition of those who received not their testimony. The sins of the former were remitted, and the sins of the latter retained, according to their inspired declaration; and thus what they bound on earth was bound in heaven, and what they loosed on earth was loosed in heaven. But the question recurs, what have we here to do with auricular confession? And the answer must be, nothing at all.

But we shall see how the late Bishop Hay of Edinburgh extracts the duty of confession out of these words:-"What is sacramental confession? Ans. It is the laying open the state of our souls to a priest, by humbly accusing ourselves to him of all our sins, in order to obtain the grace of absolution. Q. Is this confession of our sins necessary for obtaining absolution? A. It is ordained by Jesus Christ as a condition absolutely necessary for this purpose; insomuch, that without it, the grace of the sacrament of penance, by which our sins are pardoned, and we restored to the friendship of God, will not be bestowed upon us. Q. How does this necessity appear from scripture? A. It is included in the very power which Jesus Christ gave to the pastors of the church, of binding and loosing, of remitting and retaining sins. For by giving them this power, he constituted them judges of our souls in his own stead, the ministers of reconciliation between God and the sinner; consequently, it is his will that they should exercise this power with justice and discretion, according to the merits of the case, and the dispositions of the penitent; for we cannot suppose he intended that they should exercise it at random; it would be impiety to suppose that. Besides, as this tribunal is not a tribunal of strict vindictive justice, for. punishing the offender to the extent of what he deserves, seeing nothing less than hell fire is the proper punishment of mortal sin, but it is a tribunal of mercy, where, by the sentence of absolution, the sinner is delivered both from the guilt of his sins, and from the eternal punishment due to them; and this eternal punishment is exchanged for a temporal punishment, which, through the merits of Christ applied to our souls in this sacrament, both contributes to satisfy the divine justice, and is most wholesome and salutary to the penitent; it is doubtless the will of Jesus Christ, that the priest, when he exercises the power of binding, and lays this penance on the penitent, should do it with a just proportion to his guilt and dispositions. Now, it is selfevident that the priest can neither act with justice and prudence, in forgiving and retaining sins, nor observe the just proportion in imposing the proper punishment suitable to the guilt and dispositions of the sinner, unless he knows the real state of his soul, both as to his guilt and dispositions; and, as none can possibly discover this to him but the sinner himself, hence it manifestly follows, that the very power of binding and loosing, of forgiving and retaining sins, given by Jesus Christ to the priests of his church, necessarily includes a strict obligation on

sinners to lay open the state of their souls, by a humble confession of all their sins to a priest, in order to receive the effect of that power, and to be absolved from their sins by him." Sincere Christian Instructed, vol. 2. pages 77, 78.

Perhaps the reader will expect an apology from me for giving such an enormous quantity of nonsense, in one quotation. I have done it for the double purpose of showing the manner in which the greatest popish writers overwhelm with words a subject that cannot bear to be openly exposed; and the circuitous process by which they derive the duty of auricular confession of sin to a priest. When drawn from under its overwhelming verbiage, the argument is simply this:-The priest cannot remit sins till he know them; he cannot possibly know them but by the confession of the sinner; ergo, it is the duty of every man to confess his sins to a priest. Thus the very imperfection and ignorance of the priest is given as a reason for trusting in him. It is declared that he has the power of remitting sin, and granting absolution; and at the same time it is admitted that he cannot possibly know what sins a man has committed, or whether he be a sinner at all, until he shall learn the fact from the person himself who applies to him for absolution. I wish all who go to confess their sins to a priest had but the sense which a heathen king displayed in addressing the wise men of his court, which by a little accommodation may be applied to the case in hand. Dan. ii. 9. Tell me my sins, and then I shall know that you can grant me absolution.

There is a sense, indeed, in which the pastors of the church may be said to grant absolution; that is, when persons having been separated from communion in consequence of some public sin, or some sin publicly known, are, upon evidence of repentance, restored to fellowship. This is not forgiving sin, but receiving back a sinner, believing that God has forgiven him; and we believe this only when we have evidence of genuine repentance. A free and open confession is one evidence of repentance; but it is not a confession of secret sin that is required. It is enough that confession of this be made to God, who knows it already. In the case of the church, the confession must also relate to some sin that is known already, and that has been an occasion of scandal. Confession is not required for the purpose of discovering secret sins against God; but for ascertaining the state of mind of the sinner, with regard to what has given public offence; and if there be reason to believe that he really repents, he is absolved; that is, restored to his place in the church which he had forfeited. But this, in every point, is very different from confession and absolution in the church of Rome.

Bishop Hay finds another authority for auricular confession in these words, 1 John i. 8. "If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us: If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all iniquity." Plain common sense could find nothing of auricular confession to a priest in these words; for there is no mention, and not the most distant allusion to a priest, in the whole chapter, unless we shall suppose the inspired writer speaking of himself and the other apostles under that character, when he says, the things which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, &c. Yet this wordy prelate speaks of his proof

from this passage in the following confident style: "This testimony is so strong and clear, for the necessity of confessing our sins, that our adversaries have no other way to escape the force of it but by vainly pretending that the apostle means only the confessing our sins privately to God alone." We do not only pretend, but firmly maintain, that the apostle in this passage speaks of confessing sins to God, and to no other; though the grave bishop should reckon this so small a matter, that he calls it only confessing to God, whereas confessing to a priest is, in his opinion, the great and indispensable thing. The structure of the language will bear no other meaning than that the confession must be made to him who is faithful and just to forgive; that is, God, as in the version from which the bishop quotes. It is the pronoun he in our version; but it evidently relates to the substantive, God, in the fifth verse. But let us see how Bishop Hay extorts the doctrine of confession to a priest out of this passage:

"But that this (i. e. confession to God alone) cannot be the apostle's meaning, is evident from two strong reasons; first, because the confessing our sins is here put in opposition to the saying we have no sin; these two are opposite to one another, and therefore must certainly relate to the same object. Now who is there in his senses that would seriously dare to say to God in private that he has no sin? In this part of the sentence, then, the apostle certainly means saying, we have no sin before men; and, consequently, in the opposite part of it, when he says, if we confess our sins,' he necessarily means the doing so before men also." This is doubtless a most precious piece of popish logic. The whole weight of the argument, if argument it can be called, rests upon the words, if we say we have no sin; and even these conclude nothing in the bishop's favour, unless they necessarily mean, saying aloud before men. Now so far from necessarily meaning this, they do not mean this at all. They refer to what a man thinks or says in his heart. If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves. It is by what a man thinks, or says to himself, that he deceives himself; but by what he says aloud before men, he deceives not himself, but others. Besides, Bishop Hay ought to have known that some men are guilty of doing every day what he says no man in his senses will do; that is, saying to God that they have no sin. Christ described a class of men under the character of the Pharisee, who not only said to God he had no sin, at least such as other men had, but boasted of a great deal of merit. And this must be the case with every Papist when he has received the absolution of his priest, and performed his

penance.

Again," proceeds Bishop Hay, "St. James says, 'confess your sins one to another, and pray for one another, that you may be saved.' Here we see, in express terms, the confessing our sins to man laid down as a condition of our salvation." His reverence admits that there is a difficulty in the words one another, which he attempts to remove, but he only smothers it with a great heap of words. So far as the words of the apostle go, they make it as much the duty of the priests to confess to their people, as of the people to confess to the priests.

In the following, the reader will see how the meaning of the plainest passages of scripture is perverted by such writers as Bishop Hay, and indeed by all popish writers.-"St. Paul," says he, "speaking of the

reconciliation of sinners to God, says, 'God hath reconciled us to himself by Christ; and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation. For God, indeed, was in Christ reconciling the world to himself—and he hath placed in us the word of reconciliation; we are therefore ambassadors for Christ,' 2 Cor. v. 18. In these words, the apostle declares, that whereas God, through the merits of Jesus Christ, reconciled the world to himself, he was pleased to appoint the apostles, and their successors in office, to be the ministers of this reconciliation; that is, to be his substitutes on earth for applying to the souls of the people the means obtained by him for communicating the grace of reconciliation; and for this purpose, says the apostle, he placed in us the word of reconciliation, by which means we are made the ambassadors of Christ. Hence, then, it manifestly follows, that if the pastors of the church be the ministers of our reconciliation with God, if the word of reconciliation, the power of pronouncing sentence of absolution upon us, be placed in them, it is, of course, by their ministry alone, that we can obtain this reconciliation. Christ instituted no other way; therefore, it is our strict obligation to have recourse to them for this benefit, by laying open before them the state of our souls in the sacrament of confession, that they may apply to us the means of our reconciliation, in the way that Christ requires of them to do." Sincere Christian Instructed, &c. vol. 2. p. 82.

The apostle's doctrine in the above cited passage, is, that when Christ died upon the cross, "God was in him reconciling the world to himself;" that is, taking away the grounds of difference which stood between him and sinners of the human race, "not imputing to them their trespasses," but imputing them to Christ, who voluntarily took them upon himself, that he might make atonement for them; thus it is said, he bore our sins in his own body on the tree." "For God made him who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we might be the righteousness of God in him." It was thus that God reconciled us to himself; and we are said to be reconciled to God by the death of his Son. Now, says the apostle, "he hath given to us the word of reconciliation." This was not to effect the reconciliation; for Christ himself effected it. It was not even to apply the means of reconciliation, as Bishop Hay calls it, for it is the Holy Ghost alone, that can apply the benefits of Christ's death to the souls of men. It was, as the apostle himself plainly declares, the gospel with which he was put in trust, and which he calls the word of reconciliation, because it shows the way by which we become reconciled to God. The apostles received a commission from Christ himself to preach this gospel to all the world. Thus they became his ambassadors; and as such, they beseeched men, in Christ's stead, to be reconciled to God: that is, to believe in Christ, and acquiesce in the divine plan of salvation, which is called submitting to the righteousness of God.

The apostles never professed, like this arrogant priest, to put themselves forward as Christ's substitutes. They did not even call themselves ministers of reconciliation, as the popish priests do. They were only ministers of the word of reconciliation, which is an expression of precisely the same import as the modern phrase, preachers of the gospel. They were indeed ambassadors of Christ. They received their commission directly from himself. They were endowed with extraordinary and miraculous powers for the exercise of their functions; and

so guided by the Holy Spirit in all their ministrations, as to declare the mind of their Master with infallible certainty. In these respects they had no successors; and there is no need of any; for they are to us, in their writings, as much the ambassadors of Christ, as they were to those who were subjects of their personal preaching. By their word they are still beseeching men in the name of Christ to be reconciled to God.

Let no one imagine that by these remarks I mean to undervalue a standing ministry in the churches of Christ; I know this to be as really of divine appointment as the apostolic office itself. I know that he who gave apostles and prophets, for laying the foundation of the church, gave also pastors and teachers for its edifying, or building up. But the latter have no right to put themselves in the place of the former, much less to exalt themselves above them, as the silliest popish priest does, when he requires persons to confess their secret sins to him, and when he gives himself out as a minister of reconciliation, as one who is able to grant pardon of sin by means of his sacraments, and to restore sinners to the favour and friendship of their offended Creator.

"

CHAPTER XCIV.

GOTHER ON SATISFACTION FOR SIN." THE FOLLY AND IMPIETY OF THE DOCTRINE EXPOSED. NONE BUT CHRIST CAN SATISFY DIVINE JUSTICE. SOME INSTANCES OF VOLUNTARY MORTIFICATION. PARTICULAR PENANCE ENJOINED IN SCOTLAND.

STO

RY OF A POOR MAN.

SATURDAY, April 29th, 1820.

THE subject of satisfaction for sin is intimately connected with that of confession. The one, indeed, is incomplete without the other; for let a sinner make ever so good a confession, and let him even have received full absolution, it is necessary that he perform his penance; that is, make satisfaction to divine justice for his sins, in his own person. That I may do the church of Rome all manner of justice, I shall, as usual, lay down the doctrine in the very words of their own standard authors. The following is Gother's statement of what the church of Rome disavows, and of what she avows; which was published and approved "by the late venerable and reverend Dr. Richard Challoner, Bishop of Debra, and Vicar Apostolic of the London district. The twentieth edition."

"OF SATISFACTION. The Papist misrepresented, believes very injuriously of Christ's passion, being persuaded that his sufferings and death were not sufficiently satisfactory for our sins, but that it is necessary for every one to make satisfaction for themselves. And for this end, after he has been at confession, the priest enjoins him a penance; by the performance of which, he is to satisfy for his offences: and thus confidently relying on his own penitential works, he utterly evacuates Christ's passion; and though he professes himself a Christian, and that Christ is his Saviour, yet by his little trusting to him, he seems to think him to be no better than what his crucifix informs him, that is, a mere wooden one.