Scotus Academicus, Tomus decimus: De Baptismo, De Poenitentia, De Extrema Unctione

NOTE 1. As we have already said elsewhere, with respect to the administration and reception of the sacraments, one can distinguish a twofold necessity: one of means, the other of precept. Those sacraments are called necessary by a necessity of means without which salvation cannot be obtained, because they positively conduce to attaining salvation itself. Thus baptism is altogether necessary for every human being, without exception, for salvation, either in reality or in desire; so too is the sacrament of penance necessary for an adult who, after baptism, has fallen into mortal sin, because this sacrament, received in reality or in desire, positively conduces to first grace, without which salvation cannot be obtained at all. Those things, however, are called necessary by precept which are prescribed by a special ordinance of God. This necessity is itself twofold: one arising from the institution and precept of Christ the Lord, the other from the ordinance and precept of the Church. The present discussion concerns both: for the question is whether confession is necessary by necessity of means and of precept, and whether this is by natural or positive law.

NOTE 2. From the Subtle Doctor, In I Sent., d. 17, nn. 3 and 4: just as among speculative things there are certain principles whose truth is known from their terms to every intellect that apprehends those terms, and consequently the truth is also known of what is evidently inferred from such known principles, so among practical or actionable things there are first practical principles known from their terms, as well as conclusions inferred from them—for example, that God is to be loved and worshipped, and that no injury is to be inflicted or done to him. “Hence,” says the Doctor, “strictly speaking, nothing is other than of the law of nature except a principle or a demonstrated conclusion. Yet, by extending the term, something is sometimes said to be of the law of nature when it is a practical truth consonant with the principles and conclusions of the law of nature, so much so that everyone at once recognizes that it belongs to that law. From this it is clear that Gratian does not speak correctly of the right of the law of nature when he wishes those things in the Scripture of the Old or New Testament to be of the law of nature: for not all of them are practical principles known from their terms, nor demonstrated practical conclusions, nor truths evidently consonant with such principles and conclusions. He must therefore be interpreted as extending natural law to law posited by the Author of nature, as distinguished from positive law made by someone who is not the author of nature.” Hence three grades of natural law may be distinguished: in the first are practical principles known from their terms; in the second are conclusions evidently drawn from such principles; and in the third, finally, are propositions that do indeed conform to practical principles but are not evidently inferred from them. The question, then, is whether confession and the accusation of sins belong to natural law in one of these three ways.

NOTE 3. Positive divine law is founded especially on the divine precepts written in the sacred Scripture of both the Old and New Testaments. Such were the legal ceremonies to be observed in the Old Law by God’s precept; such too are the divine sacraments of the New Testament, which Christians must frequent, instituted by Christ the Lord and handed down to us through the Apostles. “For whatever,” says the Doctor, n. 4, “is contained in Scripture for the time when it is to be observed, and yet is neither known from its terms, demonstrable from truths known in that way, nor evidently consonant with such truths, is purely of positive divine law. Such are all the ceremonies of the Jews for the time of that law, and those of Christians for the time of our law. For it is neither known from its terms, nor demonstrated, nor evidently consonant with such truths that God is to be worshipped by the immolation of beasts under the Old Law at every time, or that he is to be worshipped by our ceremonies, such as the offering of the Eucharist or the singing of psalms, although these are consonant with the law of nature in that they are not contrary to it. This is also clear because what belongs to the law of nature, whether properly or by extension, is always uniform; such ceremonies are not, but differed according to the time of the other law.” So the Doctor. Ecclesiastical law, however, is that founded chiefly on the pronouncements of councils and decrees of the supreme pontiffs, with the approval and reception of the whole Church. For, says the Doctor, the Church has instituted many things to secure greater propriety in conduct and greater reverence in receiving and administering the sacraments; all these belong to positive ecclesiastical law.

Hence a threefold obligation to do something arises: either from natural law, from divine law and precept, or from ecclesiastical law and precept. The present Question will concern natural and divine law; the next will concern ecclesiastical law.

First conclusion. — SACRAMENTAL CONFESSION OF SINS IS NOT REQUIRED BY NATURAL LAW. So the Doctor, d. 17, n. 5. “I say,” he says, “that one is not bound by a precept of the law of nature to confess the sin in question, since this obligation would then have applied in the state or time of every law, which is false: it did not apply in the state of innocence, nor in the state of the Mosaic Law.” As though he said: if people were bound by natural law to make confession, they would have had to do so in the time of every law. But this is false, since the obligation to make such confession did not apply in the state of innocence or under the Mosaic Law, much less in the state before that law, after the first man’s fall. Therefore, and so forth.

Next, from St. Isidore, Etymologies, bk. 5, ch. 4: “Natural law is the same among all people and common to all nations, since it is found everywhere not by any enactment but by an instinct of nature.” Likewise Cicero, On Invention, bk. 2, says: “Natural law is what opinion did not generate, but a certain inborn force implanted.” Confession is not of this kind: it is not common among all nations, nor is it implanted by any force of nature. For the sacraments are above the dictate of natural reason: they are professions of faith and consequently must be proportionate to it. But faith is above the knowledge of natural reason; consequently, confession is not required by natural law.

Finally, the Doctor says, n. 8, it is not known to belong to the law of nature that one person is the judge of another, especially concerning a hidden sin, since a person ought to judge only what is manifest: a human being judges by appearances, but God looks into the heart. Consequently, it is likewise not naturally known that one person must reveal a hidden sin to another. Add that the confession to be made must be of a kind corresponding to the power to absolve the confessed sin. But that power does not proceed from natural law, nor is it common to every person; it comes from positive divine law, and pertains to the necessity and administration of the sacrament. Hence it was granted to the Apostles by Christ, John 20: “Whose sins you forgive”; therefore, and so forth.

YOU WILL OBJECT 1. Adam, Cain, and Job were subject to no other right or law than the law of nature; yet they were bound to make confession, for Adam and Cain are reproached for not having confessed their sin. Adam, indeed: for the gloss, explaining Genesis 1, “Adam, where are you?” says: “It is the voice of one reproaching and seeking a confession.” Cain likewise is condemned because, when God asked him in Genesis 4, “Where is Abel your brother?”, he answered impudently, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” Finally, Job says in ch. 13: “If I have hidden my sin as a man, and concealed my iniquity in my bosom”; therefore, and so forth.

I distinguish the minor premise: they were bound to make sacramental confession to another person, I deny; to profess their sins before God with humility of spirit and contrition, I grant. Hence Adam was condemned because, the Doctor says, n. 6, Adam ought not to have concealed his sin from God, for he is the Judge to whom every sin is manifest, and before whom every guilty person ought to acknowledge sin. The Lord required this confession from him, which he not only failed to make but excused his sin, laying it at the woman’s door when he said, “The woman whom you gave me as a companion,” and so forth. Hence this does not establish that under that law confession had to be made to a human being, even though it had to be made to God when he reproved him. So the Doctor. The same must be said of Cain and of Job’s text: for this most holy man speaks not of making sins known before human beings, but of declaring them before God, by which one professes oneself a sinner before God and begs his pardon. Thus St. Gregory, Moralia, bk. 22, ch. 9: “It is a mark of true humility both for each person to recognize his own iniquity and, once recognized, to disclose it in confession; but contrary to the customary vice of the human race are both committing sin in hiding it and concealing it once committed, and multiplying it by defending it once exposed. For we derive these traits of wickedness from the fall of the first man, from which we drew the very root of guilt.”

YOU WILL OBJECT 2. Precepts common to the Old and New Laws belong to the law of nature. But the precept of confession is common to both: to the Mosaic Law, for in Leviticus 16 Aaron and his sons are bound by God’s command to confess the sins of the children of Israel. For of the priest offering the goat it is said: “With both hands placed upon its head, let him confess all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their offenses and sins.” Likewise in Joshua 7 Joshua says to Achan: “My son, give glory to the Lord God of Israel, confess, and tell me what you have done; do not hide it.” Hence Proverbs 18 says: “The just person is first to accuse himself”; therefore, and so forth. — I distinguish the major premise: things common to both laws in the same manner, I grant; in different manners, I deny. Although confession of sin was prescribed in some respect in the Mosaic Law, it was not prescribed in the same way as in the evangelical Law. “For,” the Doctor says, n. 6, “in the whole Mosaic Law the confession of which we speak was not made; confession was made to God alone concerning hidden sins, while confession was made concerning certain public faults and observance of the legal rites, and by each person when he offered a sacrifice for such an offense. The priest’s general confession for the people was: ‘We have acted unjustly; we have sinned,’ and the like. In this way the priest’s public confession was a certain preparation for the people to ask God’s mercy, just as now in the Church, by this confession of which we speak, we confess that we have sinned and ask mercy for ourselves and for all the people.” So the Doctor. Hence all the confessions made under the Old Law were not sacramental, but merely private or public declarations of sin, made either before God to obtain pardon or before a legitimate judge to establish a judgment concerning a crime committed; just as Achan was questioned by Joshua so that he might acknowledge the crime he had committed, in order that a judicial sentence might be passed concerning it.

YOU WILL OBJECT 3. Every conclusion that follows from natural principles belongs to natural law. But this conclusion, “a person is bound to confess his sins to another person,” is drawn from natural principles; therefore, it belongs to natural law. The major premise is clear from what was said in the first Note. The minor premise is proved: these principles are naturally known: every guilty person is to be judged by another and not by himself, because no one should be judge in his own case. But one cannot be judged by another unless one is accused before that person; nor can one be accused before him, especially of a hidden sin, unless the guilty person himself confesses that offense. Therefore, from these principles known by natural reason and consonant with the law of nature, it follows evidently that a person ought to confess his sin to another, by whom he may be judged. — The Doctor replies, n. 7, by granting that these principles are known by the light of nature, or at least are very consonant with a proposition known by natural light, namely, that the guilty person must be judged: for no offense should remain unpunished in the universe if there is a just Ruler of the universe, which is naturally known. It is likewise known that the guilty person must be judged by another; but it is not naturally known who that other is, except God. Hence, in every state after the Fall, all the just who had faith that God was the just Ruler of the universe, after sinning against God’s law, confessed their sins to God and asked him for remission, knowing that without such remission he, as a just judge, would exact vengeance for that sin. But it is not naturally known that a person must accuse himself to another human being, especially concerning hidden sins. “For,” the Doctor says, n. 8, “no person can be judge of another person’s sin except as a minister of the supreme Judge. But in this capacity—that is, as a minister of the Judge in avenging or punishing a sin committed—it has been granted more to each person with respect to himself than to one person with respect to another. For God has entrusted each person to be God’s minister in avenging his own sin, by inflicting discipline and sorrow on himself for that sin; it is not similarly known that he granted this to anyone with respect to another. And if you argue that in a human commonwealth one person is the judge of another, I reply that this is true of those things that can become known to him in that court, such as public sins.”

Second conclusion. — CONFESSION OF ALL MORTAL SINS IS COMMANDED BY DIVINE LAW. This is defined as a matter of faith in the Council of Trent, sess. XIV, can. 7, in these words: “If anyone says that, in the sacrament of penance, it is not necessary by divine law to confess all and each mortal sin that is remembered after due and diligent reflection, even hidden ones … let him be anathema.”

✳ “The conclusion is proved from the institution of the sacrament of penance. The Council of Trent, sess. XIV, ch. 5, infers the necessity of confessing all sins from the institution of the sacrament of penance.” ✳ *From the already explained institution of the sacrament of penance, the whole Church has always understood that God also instituted integral confession of sins, and that it is necessary by divine law for all who have fallen after baptism. For our Lord Jesus Christ, as he was about to ascend from earth to heaven, left priests as his own vicars, as presidents and judges to whom all the mortal crimes into which Christ’s faithful had fallen must be brought, together with the power of the keys to pronounce judgment on the remission or retention of sins. For it is clear that priests could not exercise this judgment without knowing the case, nor could they observe equity in imposing penalties if people declared their sins only in general rather than specifically and one by one, etc. At the end of that chapter he condemns those who say that the institution of confession arose from the Lateran Council: “For,” he says, “the Church did not establish through the Lateran Council that Christ’s faithful should confess, since it had understood confession to be necessary and instituted by divine law; rather, it established that the precept of confession be fulfilled at least once a year by all and each person who has reached the age of discretion, etc.” He also adduces many passages of sacred Scripture, but the principal one is John 70.¹ from which he infers the institution of the sacrament and the necessity of confession. Omitting other explanations, Lugo says the force of the inference consists in this: Christ constituted priests not as discretionary judges whom penitents could approach at their own choice to obtain pardon for sins, but as necessary judges, without whom pardon cannot be obtained. This is inferred especially from the word retain, or from the power to retain, which he gave them together with the power to forgive; elsewhere, in Matthew 10, he signified it by the word bind. For one who has the power to bind a sinner, or exclude him from the kingdom of heaven, is not a discretionary judge but a necessary one: by withholding pardon he leaves the sinner excluded from the heavenly kingdom, and so is said to retain sins by withholding remission. In the same sense, the keys of heaven are said to have been received, because when someone is given the keys to a locked house, it thereby becomes necessary to have recourse to him in order to enter that house. Therefore, the penitent must appear before a priest as before a judge in order to obtain pardon for sin. — ✳ “From St. Athanasius, vol. 2, treatise on the Gospel words ‘You will go into the village opposite, and you will find a colt tied,’ etc., p. 990: ‘If the bonds have not yet been loosed,’ he says, ‘hand yourself over to Jesus’ disciples; for they are present to loose you by the power they received from Christ. “Whatever you bind on earth,” he says, etc. What is it to hand oneself over to Christ’s disciples to be loosed from sins, unless to disclose to them the bonds of one’s conscience and ask for the benefit of absolution?’”

The Calvinists reply that these words concern catechumens to be freed from sins through baptism, or sinners guilty of those crimes which, according to the canons, had to be expiated by public penance. — Against this, it is clear that the words are addressed to the baptized, from these words: “Each of us is bound by the bonds of sins; therefore, we hope that Jesus will send his disciples to us as well, to loose the bonds by which each of us is bound.” St. Athanasius could not have spoken in this way to catechumens unless he himself had then been a catechumen, which is absurd. — The other explanation is no more successful for the heretics: the sins subject to public penance were idolatry, adultery, and murder. But St. Athanasius speaks plainly of quite different sins. “For here,” he says shortly afterward in the same Sermon, p. 985, “one is overcome by avarice, another is entangled in fornications, another is bound by drunkenness, another in turn is held fast by empty ambition; one commits injuries, another seizes what belongs to his neighbor and the poor; another heaps interest upon interest. In short, we all labor under our vices and need the healing of our Savior, and we need him to send his disciples to us, that they may free us from the shackles of the devil.”

St. Ephrem, deacon of the Church of Edessa, teaches the same in bk. 1 of Admonitions on Compunction of Heart, where, after listing many crimes, he says: “If you find yourself overcome in this, hasten to recover your health, and seek healing through confession from a spiritual father and physician, lest you suffer the same things again.” — The same is inferred from St. Hilary, ✳ who writes in canon 18 on Matthew: “To instill the greatest fear by which all are now restrained, he set forth the unalterable rigor of the apostolic judgment: those whom they bind on earth—that is, leave entangled in the bonds of sins—and those whom they loose and receive into salvation through the confession of pardon, are by the condition of the apostolic sentence also absolved or bound in heaven.” Here Hilary, explaining how the Apostles loose the bonds of sins, uses the word “confession”; and he explains the binding of sins as leaving the bonds of sin in place, or the lack or denial of pardon, namely, the withholding of remission after confession. — From Jerome, on Matthew 16: “We read in Leviticus about lepers, who are commanded to show themselves to the priests; and if they have leprosy, then they are cleansed by the priests—not that the priests make lepers unclean, but that they have knowledge of the leper and can discern who is clean or unclean. Just as there the priest makes a leper clean or unclean, so here the bishop and priest bind or loose, not those who are innocent and without guilt, but, in virtue of their office, after hearing the variety of sins, they know who should be bound and who loosed. Jerome does not say, ‘He knows who is bound or loosed,’ but ‘who is to be bound or loosed.’ For the priest binds the impenitent and looses the penitent; he does not merely point out those already loosed or bound. But he cannot hear the variety of sins except through confession.”

St. Augustine teaches the same, bk. 50 of the Homilies, hom. 49, ch. 3, where he says: “If you have slept with someone other than your wives, do penance as it is done in the Church, so that the Church may pray for you. Let no one say to himself: ‘I do penance in secret, before God; God knows, and he pardons me, because I do it in my heart.’ Then the saying, ‘Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven,’ was spoken to no purpose; then the keys were given to the Church of God to no purpose; we frustrate the Gospel, we frustrate Christ’s words, and promise you what he denies; are we not deceiving you, etc.?” And in his Tractate 49 on John, explaining the resurrection of Lazarus, he says: “You marvel that he came out with his feet bound, and do not marvel that a man four days dead rose. In both cases the power was the Lord’s, not the dead man’s strength. He came out still bound, still wrapped up; yet he had already come outside. What does this mean? When you conceal, you lie dead; when you confess, you come forth. For what is it to come forth, unless to be made manifest by coming out, as it were, from hidden things? But so that you may confess, God does great things by calling aloud—that is, by calling with great grace. Hence, when the dead man had come out still bound, confessing and still guilty, the Lord said to the ministers, so that his sins might be absolved: ‘Loose him and let him go.’ What is ‘loose him and let him go’? ‘Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’” By these words St. Augustine signifies that the priests of the New Law cannot, by the Lord’s command, loose penitents whom his grace has raised up unless they come forth from the tomb of sin through true confession, just as the disciples could not loose Lazarus unless he had first come forth from the tomb at the voice of Christ the Lord.

St. Leo speaks similarly in Letter 49, otherwise 91: “God’s manifold mercy so aids fallen humanity that the hope of eternal life is restored not only through the grace of baptism but also through the remedy of penance, so that those who have violated the gift of rebirth, condemning themselves by their own judgment, may attain remission of their crimes. The aids of divine love have thus been ordered so that God’s pardon cannot be obtained without the prayers of priests. For Christ Jesus, the mediator between God and human beings, entrusted to the leaders of the Church the power both to assign the act of penance to those who confess and, after they have been cleansed by salutary satisfaction, to admit them to communion in the sacraments through the door of reconciliation.” Moreover, that St. Leo understands the confession to be made to priests by divine law as the kind ordinarily made in secret is clear from Letter 80 to the bishop of Campania, where among other things he writes: “Since the guilt of consciences need only be disclosed to priests in secret confession.” And below: “That confession is sufficient which is first offered to God and then also to the priest.”

The reason for this truth is drawn from the institution of the sacrament of penance. For whoever institutes some end or office is also understood to have instituted the means necessary to carry out that office and attain that end. But in instituting the sacrament of penance, Christ the Lord ordained and constituted priests as judges of the sins of a baptized person, so that they might retain or loose them at their discretion. But they cannot judge whether sins are to be remitted or retained without sacramental confession. For a judge, in order lawfully and judicially to absolve or punish a defendant, must know the defendant’s status, crime, and the gravity of the offense. He cannot know all this—especially if the crimes are hidden and concealed—unless the penitent himself makes them known through penance. Therefore, and so forth. Next: that is necessary for attaining salvation by divine law, without which mortal sins committed after baptism cannot be remitted, and by which, when observed, they are remitted by Christ’s institution. But when sacramental confession is omitted, sins remain without pardon: for as long as they are retained by the one who alone has judicial power to remit them, they are not remitted; and they are retained by priests until they have been made known to them through confession and remitted by absolution. Therefore, the necessity of confession by divine law is rightly inferred from the institution of the sacrament of penance. Finally: the minister of the sacrament of penance must observe a certain equity in imposing penalties and satisfactions according to the gravity of offenses. But without prior confession he cannot observe such equity, since without it he cannot know the number, kinds, and circumstances of sins. Consequently, confession is of divine law, just as the sacrament of penance itself is.

The Doctor subtly and excellently examines all these arguments in d. 16, where he rejects the Glossator’s opinion in d. 5, On Penance. The Glossator sets out various opinions on the institution of confession and says that it was instituted more by a certain tradition of the universal Church than on the authority of the New or Old Testament. “But,” the Doctor says, “with all due respect, the Glossator speaks irrationally. It would be shameful for a theologian to say that something is in the Bible and not know where to find it; it should be equally inappropriate for a canonist to say that something comes from the universal Tradition of the Church but not find it in the canon, if the canon sufficiently contains the universal traditions of the Church. Yet he cites no chapter of the canon containing this tradition. Also, if this opinion were true, it would seem that the pope would not be bound to confess, because an equal has no power over an equal, etc.” Having rejected the Glossator’s opinion, the Doctor declares, n. 11, that confession must be made by positive divine precept, which he infers from John 20: “Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you forgive.” “Here,” he says, “the power to forgive sins was given to the Apostles and, in them, to all priests—not principally, for that is proper to God, but ministerially and judicially. But they cannot judge in an unknown case; therefore, the case in which they are to judge must be made known to them. This disclosure is confession. Therefore, from this grant to priests of judicial power in a case concerning sin, the sinner is bound to accuse himself before them as judges, which is to confess. — If someone says that the argument rightly concludes that the sacrament of penance was instituted by Christ as useful and effective, but that it does not follow that it must necessarily be received as falling under a precept—since extreme unction and the sacrament of confirmation were instituted by Christ, as said above, and yet neither is absolutely necessary nor is there a precept to receive this or that sacrament—then, to state the argument formally: they are judges in a case concerning sin; therefore, people must accuse themselves before them. This is true of those who wish to submit themselves to their judgment and do submit; the priests indeed have the power to judge them. But it does not follow that others are bound by precept to submit themselves to their judgment. For example, there are four priests, each of whom has the authority to absolve this sinner; each is fully his judge with respect to power, yet the sinner is not bound to submit to each one, but only to one, whoever he chooses. This is confirmed by what Christ added: ‘And whose sins you retain, they are retained.’ That statement is not restrictive. For not only those sins are retained by God for punishment which are retained by a priest, since the priest retains only sins in some way accused to him, even if by inadequate signs of penance; and yet God retains for the vengeance of hell those sins that have in no way been shown to a priest. Therefore, neither is the statement ‘Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven’ restrictive. He did not add a negative that would indicate that remission by the Apostles, or retention by them, was exclusive of remission or retention by God. Although this reply seems very probable, in excluding the argument for a precept from the words of John 20, ‘Whose sins you forgive,’ etc., nevertheless, even if that argument is excluded, the point is established in two ways. First, as follows: judicial or arbitral power is never entrusted to anyone unless someone is also made bound to submit to that person; but this kind of power in a case concerning sin is entrusted directly to the priest. Therefore, someone as such is made bound to submit to his judgment, and this follows from the same grant of power. The major premise is proved: no one is the judge of someone else if it is left to that other person’s choice whether to be judged by this judge or not; for then this person would have no authority to judge if the other could be judged whenever he wished and not judged whenever he refused. What, indeed, is judicial power in someone for, unless to declare the law over someone who is bound to obey it? To judge only by way of punishment, if you wish, is not to judge. But I do not mean this either: I grant that this arbiter has not only the power to declare the law in this case, but that, once another submits to him, his judgment binds or frees that person—unlike the judgment of someone who knows the law but does not have judicial power. I argue as follows: whoever has lost first grace is bound, by necessity of precept—and by the precept ‘You shall love the Lord your God,’ etc.—to do what lies within his power to recover it, and also by the precept ‘You shall love yourself.’ But the sinner has lost first grace through mortal sin and can recover it by receiving the sacrament of penance from that judge, because it was instituted as an effective remedy for receiving first grace, in virtue of the words of John 20: ‘Whose sins you forgive,’ etc. Thus the necessity of the precept of confession is established not from that saying alone, ‘Whose sins you forgive,’ etc., but by joining it with the precept ‘You shall love the Lord your God,’ etc. — If you say the major premise is true, that one is bound to use some way by which one can recover grace, but not specifically this one, if another is possible—and that although receiving the sacrament of penance is a useful way, there is another useful way, since it has not been proved that this is the exclusive way to recover grace—against this: no other way is so easy and so certain. Here nothing is required except not placing an obstacle to grace, which is much less than having some attrition sufficient, by way of a merit de congruo, for justification, as was said above, d. 11. Someone can also be more certain that he has placed no obstacle than that he has sufficient attrition, as it were a merit de congruo. For he can reasonably know that he is not then actually sinning, inwardly or outwardly, and that he intends² to recover what the Church intends to confer in that sacrament; he cannot similarly know that he has attrition sufficient as a merit de congruo for justification. I therefore take this as the major premise: where there is an easier way, that is, one more within a person’s power and more certain for recovering grace, everyone is bound to that way, so that, without having lost access to it, he does not attempt another more difficult and uncertain way, since then he would expose himself to danger of salvation and seem to despise his own salvation. But receiving the sacrament of penance is a way more possible for a person and more certain for recovering first grace. Therefore, by virtue of what gives this sacrament efficacy, and of the precept to love God and oneself, one is bound to this way. If this argument proves that the precept of confession comes from the Gospel, from the words ‘Whose sins you forgive,’ etc., together with ‘You shall love the Lord,’ etc., so much the better; if not, at least it proves that a general precept to make confession is very reasonable for the community. For although some person might have some special remedy, nevertheless, since this remedy is more possible and certain for the community, it is reasonable to give a precept concerning it to everyone in the community. This was said above of baptism: although someone may have baptism of desire without baptism of water, since baptism of water is an easy and certain remedy, a precept about it for the whole community is very reasonable. Thus at least I establish that a general precept to make confession would reasonably have been given. — If you insist that the arguments in this section do not prove that the precept was given in the words of the Gospel, shall we say secondly that this precept is found in the words of an Apostle? It is said to come from the words of James 5: ‘Confess your sins to one another.’ But it does not seem to me that James gave this precept or promulgated a precept from Christ. Not the first: for whence would he have authority to bind the whole Church, since he was bishop of the Church of Jerusalem? Unless you say that this Church was initially the principal one and, consequently, its bishop the principal patriarch—which the Romans would not concede, nor that such authority had been withdrawn from him by his own utterance at that time. Nor does the second seem right: for when the Apostles promulgated the Lord’s precept in their writings, they used a manner of speaking by which it could be recognized that they were Christ’s heralds. This is clear from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, ch. 7: when he wishes to promulgate the Lord’s precept not to dismiss one’s wife, he says, ‘I command, not I, but the Lord,’ etc.; but when he offers his own counsel concerning a husband who has come to the faith living with his unbelieving wife, saying that this is permitted without offense to Christ but is not necessary, he says, ‘I say, I, not the Lord.’ Otherwise the Church could not know that he was promulgating a precept as a herald unless he made it clear in what preceded or followed. Both points are also proved by the words attached: by saying ‘Confess to one another,’ James no more says that confession is to be made to a priest than to another person; for he adds, ‘and pray for one another, that you may be saved,’ where no one would say that he instituted or promulgated a divine precept. Its meaning is the same as that of ‘Confess to one another’: an exhortation to humility, namely, that we generally confess among our fellow sinners, according to the saying, ‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves,’ etc. By the second saying he likewise exhorts to brotherly charity, namely, that through brotherly love we help one another. It is clear, therefore, that this is not of divine law promulgated through the Church’s Scripture.” So the Doctor, who proves plainly that confession is of divine law.

Since one must contend against the heretics of our time not only by arguments but especially by the Church’s perpetual and constant Tradition, and since they affirm that confession was instituted only by Innocent III at the Lateran Council, I have therefore judged it fitting to append here some of the many authorities from councils and the holy Fathers cited by controversialists.

The divine institution of confession is therefore proved from councils. First, from Laodicea, canon 2, under Pope Sylvester in the year 319: “For those who have fallen into various sins, and persevere in prayer, confession, and penance, showing a complete turning away from their evils, a time of penance is to be assigned according to the kind of sin.” That confession for which a time of penance must be assigned according to the kind of sin must be made specifically to human beings. — ✳ “Nevertheless, Gabriel Albaspinaeus, bishop of Orléans, admits in his notes on that canon that the words ‘persevering in prayer, confession, and penance’ do not directly concern sacramental confession, but external acts of penance. We do not find that a penitent must persevere in sacramental confession; once confessing is sufficient. But the penitent must indeed testify by tears, prayers, prostrations, and bodily mortifications how keenly he grieves for the sins he has committed. Next, those to whom that canon applies are already presumed to have confessed their sins. For this was the reason the canon was promulgated. The Council of Elvira had decreed that ‘whoever commits a very great sin be assigned penance, but if he commits several, be denied it.’ The Fathers of Laodicea seemed to moderate somewhat that severe practice observed in the Church, directing that a person who confessed himself guilty of grave sins, even if numerous, should be admitted to fitting penance after consistently demonstrating his sorrow. Confession therefore preceded the demonstration of sorrow and repentance, and consequently those words ‘persevering in prayer, confession,’ etc., do not pertain to sacramental confession. To confirm this, the aforesaid author notes that those who confessed were either immediately absolved, or immediately granted penance if they merited it, or excommunicated if their guilt merited excommunication. Confessions were used for these three purposes and no others. But the canon does not concern those who were immediately absolved, for it decrees that they be assigned penance for a suitable time; and everyone knows that in ancient times penance was completed before absolution. Nor does it concern those who were immediately admitted to penance, because it requires them first to be tested until they have consistently given signs of sincere repentance and contrition through tears and prayers. The canon must therefore be understood of the third class of penitents, namely, those who were excommunicated; but excommunication was preceded by confession. For two kinds of excommunication must again be distinguished: the first was imposed on the obstinate, the second on grave sinners who voluntarily submitted their crimes to the Church’s authority. ✳ — From the Sixth Synod in Trullo, canon 102: ‘Those who have received from God the power of loosing and binding must consider the kind of sin and the readiness of the sinner to turn from it, and so apply a remedy suited to the illness, lest, if they prescribe treatment without due regard to the sin, they fail in the sick person’s cure. For the illness of sin is not simple, but varied and manifold, and sprouts up in many branches, through which evil spreads far and wide until it resists the remedy’s power.’ Therefore, whoever wishes to demonstrate skill in the spiritual art of healing must carefully examine the condition of the sinner: whether he inclines toward healing, or, by the habits with which he is familiar, struggles against the illness. But a priest cannot do this without confession of hidden sins. — From the Third Council of Carthage, ch. 31: ‘The periods of penance are to be assigned to penitents according to the difference of their sins, at the bishop’s discretion.’ But this difference of sins cannot be established without specific confession. — From the First Council of Chalon, canon 8: ‘The whole body of priests is known to agree that penance should be assigned to penitents by priests after confession has been made.’ — From the Second Council of Chalon, canon 31, around the year 813: ‘We also saw that this needed correction: some people, when confessing their sins to priests, do not do so fully. Since a human being consists of two substances, namely, soul and body, and sin is committed sometimes by a movement of the mind, sometimes through weakness of the flesh, sins must be carefully investigated, so that confession may be complete concerning both: that is, the person must confess both what was done through the body and what is transgressed in thought alone.’ — From the Third Council of Tours, held around the same time, canon 22: ‘Bishops and priests must carefully consider how to assign a period of abstinence to people who confess their offenses to them.’ — ✳ From the First Council of Paris, held in 829, canon 32: ‘Since many priests, partly through negligence and partly through ignorance, impose a measure of penance on those confessing their guilt contrary to what the canon laws prescribe, using certain little books written against canonical authority, which they call penitentials, and thereby do not heal the wounds of sins but rather indulge and soothe them, incurring the prophetic reproach: “Woe to those who sew cushions under every elbow and make pillows to deceive souls”; it has seemed salutary to all of us together that each bishop in his own diocese carefully seek out those erroneous little books and consign them to the fire,’ etc. And immediately afterward: ‘Unlearned priests must also be instructed diligently by their bishops how to inquire discreetly into the sins of those who confess and how to impose on them a fitting measure of penance according to canonical authority, since until now, through their negligence and ignorance, the crimes of many have gone unpunished, and there is no doubt that this leads to the ruin of souls.’ — From Mainz, under Archbishop Rabanus, in the year 847, canon 26: ‘A pure confession must be elicited by priests from the sick who are in danger of death; a measure of penance is not to be imposed on them, but it is to be made known.’ — From Worms, around the year 868, ch. 25: ‘Periods of penance are to be assigned to penitents according to the difference of their sins, at the priest’s discretion.’ Therefore, when imposing penance the priest must examine the causes, origin, and manner of each person’s sins, as well as the effects and groaning of those who offend, and the circumstances of time, person, place, and age, so that by considering the offenses and groaning of each offender he does not turn his eyes away from the sacred canons. — ✳ Add the Lateran Council under Innocent III, canon 21; the Council of Constantinople, sess. 3; the Council of Florence in its decree of union; and the councils against the Arians and Bulgarians mentioned above.” ✳ — From all these ancient and modern councils, held in such different times and places, the unanimous consent of the whole Church makes it clear that the necessity of confession is most ancient and has no origin other than God. For according to Augustine, Rule 14, On Baptism, ch. 24: “What the universal Church holds, and was not instituted by councils but has always been maintained, is most rightly believed to have been handed down by apostolic authority.” But the universal Church has always held this confession, as is clear from the councils and will be clear from the Fathers; nor is this necessity recorded as having begun with any council or decrees of the pontiffs. “For although annual confession was commanded at the Lateran Council, confession itself did not begin there; only the time was prescribed at which confession of sins must be made, which is necessary by divine law,” as the Council of Trent says, sess. XIV, ch. 5.

Second, it is proved from the holy Fathers. For first, St. Irenaeus, who lived close to the age of the Apostles, says in bk. 1, ch. 9, On Certain Women Seduced by the Heretic Marcus: These women, having been converted to the Church of God, confessed that, as to their bodies, they had been corrupted by him through lust, and that they had loved him with great ardor. ✳ “To forestall the heretics’ reply that the words confessed are to be understood only of a spontaneous disclosure of one’s sin, made indifferently to anyone, and not of the confession we call sacramental, we must add what St. Irenaeus reports in the same place about a deacon’s wife, corrupted by that same Marcus and afterward converted to penance. Since, he says, his wife was beautiful, and had been corrupted in mind and body by this magician, and had followed him for a long time; afterward, when the brothers had converted her with much effort, she spent all her time in exomologesis, weeping and lamenting the corruption she had suffered from this magician. Indeed, the conversion and confession of those women whom St. Irenaeus discussed above resembled the conversion and confession of that deacon’s wife just mentioned. But her confession was not purely spontaneous; it was religious, made not indiscriminately to anyone, but only to priests, from whom she received a rule of satisfaction. For that confession belonged to exomologesis, as is clear from these words: “she spent all her time in exomologesis.” But exomologesis was an act of religion and was performed according to the priests’ direction. Therefore her confession, and consequently that of the other women, was religious and necessary, and was made to priests.”

Nor should they say that exomologesis does not mean confession of sins, but the whole penitential practice, which was divided into several stages: the weepers, the hearers, the prostrated, and those standing. For these stages of penance were introduced into the Church almost 150 years after St. Irenaeus, namely in the time of Pope Cornelius, when the heresy of Novatian arose. In the time of St. Irenaeus and the two preceding centuries, however, no penalties were imposed on sinners in the Church other than deposition for clerics and exclusion from communion for laypeople, as is clear from the Apostolic Canons and the Council of Illiberis. Those penalties were never expressed by the word exomologesis. It remains, therefore, that St. Irenaeus understood confession by exomologesis. And indeed this is the word’s first and proper meaning, and it is used in that sense in Matthew 8: ἐξομολογούμενοι τὰς ἁμαρτίας αὐτῶν, confessing their sins. Likewise in 1 John, ch. 2, v. 9, and in St. James, ch. 5, v. 16. It is therefore very credible that the word was extended to the whole penitential practice and its observance because it signified penance’s principal part, namely confession. St. Irenaeus speaks of exomologesis again in bk. 3, ch. 4: Cerdon, often coming into the Church and performing exomologesis, completed it in this way: at one time secretly teaching what it is, at another performing exomologesis. There St. Irenaeus discusses Cerdon’s secret heresy and his hidden lust, or corruption of women, which could not be uncovered without special confession. —

✳ “Tertullian teaches this more explicitly in bk. On Penance, ch. 9, where he says: Exomologesis is that by which we confess our offense to the Lord, not as to one unaware of it, but because satisfaction is arranged through confession, penance arises from confession, and God is appeased by penance. He explains there how that confession should be made, saying that in it the sinner casts himself before the presbyters and kneels before God’s beloved. To show that this confession must necessarily be made not to God alone but also to human beings, he adds in the next chapter: Many avoid this practice of making themselves known, thinking more of their shame than of their salvation, like those who, suffering from an ailment in the more private parts of the body, avoid the physicians’ care and so perish in their embarrassment. Here, plainly, he compares the priest to a physician and confession of hidden crimes to a remedy; those who reject it perish from shame. Hence he adds: Concealment of an offense plainly promises a great advantage to shame. That is, if we hide something from human knowledge, shall we likewise hide it from God? Are human opinion and God’s knowledge so alike? Is it better to lie hidden under condemnation than to be absolved openly? Further, it is clear from ch. 4 that Tertullian speaks of every kind of sin, hidden as well as private, internal as well as external. For the same one, he says, who has assigned punishment by judgment for all offenses committed in the flesh or in the spirit, by deed or by will, has also promised pardon through penance. He later divides penance into that which precedes baptism and that which follows it; he holds that this latter kind consists in confession of sins and satisfaction. Nor should the heretics say that Tertullian speaks there only of public confession: confession of secret and interior sins was not public but private. Moreover, whether it was made publicly or privately does not pertain to the essence of the sacrament of penance. It is enough for us to learn from Tertullian that confession of each and every sin is necessary in order to obtain their remission.”

Four or five passages can be cited from Origen that demonstrate Catholic confession more clearly than other passages. The first is found in Homily 2 on Psalm 37, where he intimates that confession is required by divine law, proving it from Scripture. These are his words: Since I declare my iniquity, we have often said that declaring one’s iniquity is confession of sin. See, then, what divine Scripture teaches us: that a sin once covered must not be kept hidden within. For perhaps, just as those who have undigested food shut up inside, or a quantity of fluid and phlegm pressing on the stomach, are relieved if they vomit, so those who have sinned, if they conceal and retain their sin within themselves, are pressed inwardly and almost choked by the phlegm or fluid of sin. But if someone becomes his own accuser, accusing himself and confessing, he vomits out the offense along with the whole cause of the disease. Only take careful thought about whom you ought to confess your sin to. First test the physician to whom you should disclose the cause of your sickness, one who knows how to be sick with the sick, to weep with those who weep, and who understands the discipline of sympathy and compassion. Then, when the person who is ill has first shown himself to be someone who is learned and merciful as a physician, follow and carry out whatever advice he gives, if he understands and sees that your sickness is such that it ought to be disclosed and treated before the whole Church, so that perhaps others too may be built up and you yourself easily healed. This must be undertaken with much deliberation and with that physician’s thoroughly expert counsel.

✳ “THEY REPLY that by confession and disclosure of sickness before the Church, Origen did not mean a declaration to a priest of each sin by name, but a general acknowledgment of one’s sins and a profession and detestation of one’s wickedness through penitential works and even words. — Against this: if Origen were speaking only of that general confession of sins, why would he require such care and diligence in finding and choosing a physician? Why would he say that the physician himself needed so much deliberation and counsel to reach a sound judgment? That general confession, as the opponents claim, can be made indiscriminately to anyone. But what does the comparison of sins with raw and undigested food mean, unless each sin must be vomited out, lest those who retain them be choked by them? Again, what does the comparison of a priest with a physician show, unless that all the evils of conscience, with their causes and circumstances, must be disclosed so that an appropriate remedy may be applied? Nor should they say that no priest is mentioned here and that the physician could be someone else. Origen teaches who that physician is in Homily 3 on Leviticus. There, anticipating an objection that some of his hearers might have made—since they had already been shaken by reports of Montanus’s heresy, which denied the Church’s power to remit sins committed after baptism—he says: But perhaps the hearers in the Church will say: things were almost better with the ancients than with us, when pardon was granted to sinners who offered sacrifices in various rites. Among us there is one way of pardon for sins, which is granted at the beginning through the grace of baptismal washing. After that, no mercy or pardon is granted to one who sins. To refute these words, which savor of the Montanists’ error, and to show that our condition is no worse than that of the faithful under the Old Testament, he lists various means by which pardon for sins is obtained under the Law of grace: baptism, martyrdom, almsgiving, charity, and others. When he comes to the seventh, he says: There is still a seventh, although hard ✳ and laborious: remission of sins comes through penance, when the sinner washes his bed with his tears and his tears become his bread day and night, and when he is not ashamed to disclose his sin to the Lord’s priest and seek a remedy, according to the one who says: “I said, I will declare my injustice against myself to the Lord, and you forgave the impiety of my heart.””

✳ “THE OPPONENTS ARGUE from this passage: Origen did not even acknowledge the confession used among the Roman Catholics, since he proposed five other ways of remitting sins besides confession and baptism; but Origen did so. — I distinguish: Origen proposed five other ways of remitting mortal sins without the intention of receiving baptism or making confession, I deny; venial sins, or even mortal sins together with the intention of receiving baptism or making confession, I grant. For Origen intended to show that the New Law, like the Old Testament, lacked no varied remedies for sins. He therefore lists all the ways sins can be blotted out, speaking indiscriminately of mortal and venial sins. But venial sins are remitted without confession by the Lord’s Prayer and the pious works of Christian life, as Augustine himself testifies in Homily 49 on John. Perfect charity also obtains pardon for even mortal sins before the sacrament is actually received, according to the teaching of the Council of Trent, sess. XIV. St. Augustine teaches in many places that alms and good works likewise contribute substantially to salvation even before baptism is actually received; yet no one would infer from this that he denied the necessity of baptism. Therefore, although Origen mentions other ways of remitting sins, it cannot be inferred that he denied the necessity of baptism and confession. Rather, when opportunity to receive those sacraments is lacking, Origen wished to show that those could be supplied by other means.”

The third passage is taken from the same homily. He says: Every kind of deed must be declared and brought into public view: all that we have done, whether we have acted secretly, committed something in speech alone, or even done something within the secrets of our thoughts; all must be made public and brought forth. They must be brought forth not by the one who is both the accuser and the instigator of sin—for he first urges us to sin, and then, when we have sinned, accuses us. If, therefore, we forestall him in this life and become our own accusers, we escape the wickedness of the devil, our enemy and accuser. Thus the Prophet says elsewhere: “Declare your iniquities first, so that you may be justified.” And in Homily 17 on Luke: If we have sinned, we ought to say: “I made my sin known to you, and I did not hide my iniquity.” For if we reveal our sins, not only to God but also to those who can heal our wounds and sins, they will be blotted out by him who says: “Behold, I blot out your iniquities like a cloud.”

✳ “From St. Cyprian, On the Lapsed: How much greater in faith and better in reverence are those who, although not stained by the crime of sacrifice or of a certificate, yet because they even considered doing so, confess this very thing sorrowfully and simply before God’s priests, make an exomologesis of conscience, lay bare the burden of their soul, and seek healing medicine even for small and slight wounds. That all are bound to this sincere confession of interior sins, he declares in the following words: Let each one, I beg you, brothers, confess his offense while the one who has sinned is still in this world, while his confession can be received, while satisfaction and remission made through the priests are acceptable to the Lord. —”

✳ “Theodoret, bk. 4 of Heretical Fables, ch. 10, p. 242 of Sismondi’s edition, censures the heretical Audiani as follows: They boast that they grant remission of sins. Dividing the sacred books into two parts, together with the apocryphal ones (for they regard these latter as especially trinitarian and mystical), and arranging them in order on either side, they command each person to pass between them and confess his sins. Then they pardon those who have confessed—not setting a time for penance, as the Church’s laws prescribe, but pardoning by their own authority. Those who pass through in this way know that the proceeding is a sham, and conceal their real sins, saying some small, laughable things that no one would be ashamed to say unless he were held by the same madness as they. — From the apocryphal Letter of Clement of Rome to James, written at least in the fourth century: If envy, unbelief, or another evil of those mentioned above has secretly crept into anyone’s heart, let him who cares for his soul not be ashamed to confess it to the one who presides, so that he may be healed by him with salutary counsel through the word of God. Speaking then of St. Peter, he says: He taught that evil thoughts should immediately be dashed against Christ and made known to God’s priests. — Eusebius, bk. 4 of Ecclesiastical History, ch. 34, in the edition of Henri de Valois, reports that Philip, whom most ancient ecclesiastical writers regard as the first Christian emperor, wished to take part with the rest of the people in the church’s prayers during the last Easter vigil. But the bishop who presided over that church did not allow him to enter until he had made confession and joined those who had fallen through human frailty and stood among the penitents. For because of the many crimes he had committed, the bishop would never have admitted him at all unless he had done so first; and the emperor willingly obeyed, showing by his deeds a sincere and religious fear of God. From this passage it is clear that confession of sins was in use before the Council of Nicaea. To prevent anyone from confusing exomologesis here with the order of penitents, Eusebius distinguishes the two, noting both “confession” and “the order of penitents” as separate things. Then he extends that confession not only to certain especially grave crimes, such as idolatry, adultery, and murder, but to all the crimes he had committed. Finally, these words show that it was not voluntary and optional: “for the bishop would never have admitted him at all unless he had done so first.” — Lactantius Firmianus left us two especially noteworthy testimonies. The first is in bk. 4 of the Institutes, ch. 17, on true wisdom. Explaining how circumcision under the Old Law was a figure of the confession of sins made under the New, he says: Since that part of the body which is circumcised bears a certain likeness to the heart and is shameful, God commanded that it be exposed in circumcision, so that by this sign he might warn us not to keep our breast covered—that is, not to conceal within the secrets of conscience what we do shamefully. This is the circumcision of the heart of which the Prophets speak, which God transferred from mortal flesh to its ruin, and which alone will remain. For, wishing in his eternal goodness to provide for our life and salvation, he set before us penance in that circumcision, so that if we lay bare our heart—that is, confess our sins—we may make satisfaction to God and obtain pardon, which is denied to the obstinate and to those who conceal their offenses by him who looks not upon the face as a human being does, but upon the inmost and secret recesses of the breast.”

To close off the heretics’ usual evasions, here and in other passages to be cited, we must observe: 1. Every sin, of whatever kind, is subject to the law of confession, lest we conceal within the secrets of conscience what we do shamefully. 2. Integral confession is necessary for everyone to obtain pardon, since it is denied, he says, to the obstinate and those who conceal their offenses. 3. That confession must be made not to God alone, who looks upon the inmost and secret recesses of the heart, but to a human being, who judges by appearances and from whom sins can be hidden. To be sure, Lactantius does not show in these words whether that confession was made privately to a priest or before a council of presbyters. But whether it was public or private is immaterial to the essence of the Church’s doctrine, which establishes only that confession of all mortal sins must be made to priests. Elsewhere it will be shown that auricular confession was in use from the earliest times of the Church. 4. A passage from ch. 30 of the same book is offered: Since every gathering of heretics thinks its own church is Catholic, we must know that the true Church is the one in which there are religion, confession, and penance, which healthfully heals the sins and wounds to which the weakness of the flesh is subject. Here Lactantius takes aim at the Novatians. But they did not deny confession made to God alone, since they maintained that sins committed after baptism could not be remitted by the Church, but only by God. Therefore he assigns as a mark of the true Church confession made to priests of all sins contracted through the weakness of the flesh. — We have several testimonies from St. Basil the Great that wonderfully confirm the Catholic doctrine of confession. In his Commentary on Psalm 29, p. 191, Homily 1, Paris edition of 1618, he admits: For propitiation, then, or remission of the things arising from sins, confess the things you formerly did wrongly and without sobriety. St. Basil plainly speaks there of all sins and teaches that confession obtains their remission. To whom such confession must be made, he states in Canon 74 of his third canonical letter to Amphilochius, vol. 2, p. 777: If, then, he says, one of those who have fallen into the aforementioned sins has made confession and become good, and he to whom the power to bind and loose has been entrusted by God’s kindness should become more merciful, seeing the sinner’s full confession for the shortening of his time of punishment, he will not deserve condemnation, since the history given us in Scripture shows that those who confess with greater effort attain God’s mercy more quickly. This is even clearer from St. Basil’s Shorter Rules, question 288, phrased as follows: If someone wishes to confess his sins, is he free to confess them indiscriminately to anyone he chooses, or only to certain people? He answers: Sins must necessarily be disclosed to those entrusted with the administration of God’s mysteries. And in his answer to question 229: The same rule applies to confession of sins as to disclosure of bodily defects. Just as people do not rashly disclose bodily defects to anyone they happen to meet, but only to those who know how to treat them, so confession of sins must be made to those who can cure them. From question 110, phrased thus—Is it appropriate for the superior herself to be present when a sister confesses to a presbyter?—it is clear that nuns at that time confessed their sins to a presbyter. That this practice belonged not only to monks and nuns but to all the faithful is clear from his homily on the words “Take heed to yourself,” p. 345, delivered to the people: Physicians exhort those suffering from illness to take heed to themselves and neglect nothing that concerns their treatment and health. Likewise, the saving word of this command, the physician of our souls (that is, the priest), heals the soul grievously afflicted by the harm of mortal sin with this small remedy. Therefore take heed to yourself, so that in proportion to your offense you may also use this remedy applied to you to restore your health. Is the sin great and grave? You need much confession, bitter tears, and so on. — St. Gregory Nazianzen was joined to St. Basil no less in thought than in friendship when he says in Oration 15, p. 236: Confession is a great remedy for vice, and flight from sin. Among the graces he asks of God he also lists the correction that comes from disclosing sin. Note that he does not use the word exomologesis, which the opponents would transfer to the entire penitential act, but the word homologia, which means a simple declaration of sins. — To these is added the authority of St. Gregory of Nyssa, who lists the disclosure of sins among the Church’s rites in Oration 10, Against Eunomius, p. 277 of the Paris edition of 1617. That this disclosure includes even sins for which the canons prescribe no penalty, such as theft, and is made to priests, is proved by his Letter to Letoius, Bishop of Melitene, vol. 2, p. 954: But the one who secretly takes what belongs to another, if afterward he discloses his sin to a priest, will cure his sickness by turning his zeal for vice in the opposite direction. Finally, in his Oration Against Those Who Judge Others Harshly, he says: Therefore let your confidence be greater in the one who has begotten you in God than in those who begot you bodily. Boldly show him what is hidden. Uncover the secrets of your soul to him, as hidden wounds to a physician. He will have regard for both your honor and your health. The preceding words show that St. Gregory speaks of private confession, not public penance.

But we, he says, promise penance in words, yet show no effort or labor in deeds, but follow the same way of life we followed before confessing and detesting our sins. The same cheerfulness in our face, the same splendor in our dress and food, etc. These words cannot be said of public penitents, for a very austere way of life was prescribed for them. Moreover, St. Gregory would not count himself among them, since the Fathers customarily distinguished themselves and the other faithful from public penitents by using the expression “we.” Finally, he is speaking there of sins not subject to public but to private penance, namely greed, perjury, and lying. But you, he says, whose soul is sick, why do you not hasten to the physician? Why do you not show him your illness by confessing it? Have you fallen ill by indulging in pleasures? Cure it by abstinence and fasting. Is your soul suffering from hunger? Apply the medicine of temperance. Have you fallen into a fever through an excessive and manifold desire for money? Let generosity and almsgiving drive it away. Has your neighbor’s lie led you to destruction? Let zeal for truth avert the danger, etc. — From St. Ambrose, bk. 2 of On Penance, ch. 9: Many, conscious of their sins and fearing future punishment, ask for penance; when they have received it, they are recalled by shame from public supplication.… Some ask for penance so that they may immediately be restored to communion. These wish not so much to loose themselves as to bind the priest: for they do not put off their own conscience but put on the priest’s, to whom it was commanded: “Do not give what is holy to dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine”—that is, the fellowship of sacred communion is not readily to be granted to unclean spirits. Thus you may see those walking in a white garment who ought to mourn and groan, because they have dirtied the garment of cleansing and grace, etc. — In the life of St. Ambrose written by St. Paulinus, we read: Whenever anyone, having fallen, confessed his lapses to him in order to receive penance, he wept so that he made that person weep as well. He seemed to lie with the one lying there. He told no one but the Lord, before whom he interceded, the causes of the crimes that people confessed to him, leaving a good example to later priests: that they should be intercessors before God rather than accusers before human beings. From this testimony we have three points: 1. secret confession of sins; 2. the seal of confession; 3. that bishops often performed the ministry of hearing confessions themselves. Another testimony can also be cited from St. Ambrose, bk. 1 of On Penance, ch. 6, where he says: If you wish to be justified, confess your offense; for shamefaced confession of sins breaks the bonds of crimes. — We have already seen how excellently St. Chrysostom commends the power to bind and loose entrusted to priests. Now we must examine his judgment about confession of sins. In bk. 2 of On the Priesthood, ch. 4, p. 20, vol. 4, he says: Nothing of this should be left unexamined; the bishop must investigate it thoroughly. After he has searched everything accurately and diligently, he must then apply his own remedies suitably, appropriately, and fittingly. The subject here is hidden illnesses of the soul; public sins need not be examined so carefully, since they are known to everyone. Such exact examination of conscience cannot be made except through confession of all sins in their particulars and circumstances. It is also clear that without this no remedies can be applied so suitably and fittingly. St. Chrysostom speaks of that confession in Homily 30 on Genesis, p. 125, vol. 2: By God’s grace we have now come to this great week. Now above all we must pursue the course of fasting, continue our prayers more earnestly, and make a careful and pure confession of sins. Lest the opponents twist the word exomologesis, as they usually do, into mere contrition of heart and prostration of the body, in which they claim ancient penance consisted, we must add what follows immediately concerning the confession by which the faithful prepared themselves for the Paschal feasts. For our enemy knows that during this time we can speak of what concerns our salvation, declare or disclose our sins, uncover our wounds to a physician, and obtain health. Therefore exomologesis consists especially in revealing hidden sins. In Homily 20 on Genesis, ch. 5: For the fornicator, or adulterer, or one who has committed some such act, even if he can escape notice by everyone, nevertheless never triumphs in tranquility, etc. There he speaks of hidden sins; what he thinks about them he adds immediately, in excellent agreement with our point: Yet the one who has done this, if he wishes to use the help of conscience as he ought, hasten to confess his crime, show his sore to a physician who will heal and not reproach him, receive remedies from him, speak to him alone with no one else knowing, and tell him everything carefully, will easily amend his sins. For confession of sins is the abolition of offenses. An exhortation equally effective for proving this point is found in his Homily On the Samaritan Woman, vol. 4, p. 421. After St. Chrysostom says, “The woman began to disclose her sins; she began to confess,” he adds: Let us too imitate that woman and not be ashamed of our own sins, but fear God. I see the opposite happening. We do not fear the one who will judge us, yet we dread those who do not harm us at all, and are not afraid of the disgrace we shall incur from them; therefore we suffer punishment in the things we fear. For whoever is ashamed to disclose sins to a human being, but is not ashamed to make satisfaction to God, refuses to confess and do penance; on that day he will be exposed not before one or two people, but before the whole world looking on. Since many find this disclosure of hidden sins very difficult, St. Chrysostom warns in bk. 2 of On the Priesthood, ch. 3, that much skill is needed to persuade Christians who are struggling to submit willingly and freely to the priests’ treatment, and not only that, but also to be grateful to them for the treatment and medicine. And in Homily 2 on ch. 6 of the Epistle to the Hebrews: What is the medicine of penance, and how is it prepared? First, by condemnation and confession of one’s sins: “I made my sin known to you, and did not hide my iniquity. I will declare my iniquity against myself to the Lord, and you forgave the impiety of my sin.” And again: “Declare your sins first, so that you may be justified.” Second, much humility is needed; for it is like a golden chain, and once it has begun, all things follow. Unless you have confessed your sin as you ought to confess it, the soul becomes humble.… After humility, intense prayers and many tears are needed, by day and night, etc. Then, later in the same homily, he says it is a condition of true penance to conduct oneself properly toward priests and lay one’s sins before them one by one. Otherwise, he says, if someone says “I am a sinner,” but does not consider and reckon his sins by their kinds, and does not say “I committed this and that sin,” he will never cease: he will always be confessing, but will take no care to amend. ✳ — From Pacian, Exhortation to Penance: I address you first, brothers, who refuse penance after committing crimes: you, I say, who are shameless after your impudence, ashamed after your sins; you are not ashamed to sin, yet ashamed to confess.… I beg you by the Lord whom hidden things do not deceive: stop covering your wounded conscience. Wise sick people do not fear physicians, even when they cut and cauterize hidden parts.… Now let me speak to those who wisely and well confess their wounds under the name of penance, yet know neither what penance is nor how wounds are healed. They resemble those who show their sores and confess their swellings while physicians sit by, but, when advised what must be applied, neglect it, and loathe what they must drink. — ✳ “Pope Innocent I plainly teaches that not only graver sins, which were subject to public penance, but also lesser sins must be entrusted to the priest’s judgment, so that he may loose their bonds according to the penitent’s confession and satisfaction. These are his words, Letter 1 to Decentius, Bishop of Gubbio, ch. 7: As for penitents, whether they do penance for graver or lesser offenses, if no illness intervenes, the Roman Church’s custom shows that they are to be absolved on the Thursday before Easter. But it belongs to the priest to assess the weight of offenses, attend to the penitent’s confession and to the tears and weeping of the one correcting himself, and then order absolution when he sees that satisfaction is appropriate; this cannot be done without special confession. — ✳ St. Jerome explains this passage in favor of confession made individually to priests, “If a serpent bites in silence, he who has a tongue is no better off,” in his Commentary on Ecclesiastes, ch. 10, p. 59, vol. 7, Basel edition of 1525: If the serpent devil has secretly bitten someone and, with no one knowing, infected him with the poison of sin, if the one who has been struck remains silent and does not do penance or wish to confess his wound to a brother and teacher, the teacher who has a tongue for healing will not easily be able to help him. For if the sick person is ashamed to confess his wound to a physician, medicine cannot cure what it does not know. There the necessity is clearly expressed of disclosing hidden sins and all sins to priests. — From St. Augustine, Homily 1 among the fifty: Let a person judge himself in these matters (namely, those against the Decalogue, of which Paul says that those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of God, as he said above), lest, when he can do so no longer, he be judged by the Lord against his will. When he has pronounced on himself the sentence of the harshest medicine, yet still medicine, let him come to the bishops, through whom the keys are administered to him in the Church. Let him, now beginning to be a good son, observe the order of the maternal members, and receive from the ministers of the sacraments the measure of his satisfaction, so that, in offering the sacrifice of a contrite heart, he may act devoutly and humbly in a way that benefits not only his own salvation but also serves as an example to others. If his sin has caused not only grave harm to himself but also scandal to others, and the bishop judges it useful to the Church, let him not refuse or resist doing penance in the knowledge of many or even of the whole congregation; through shame, let him not add a swelling to a lethal and deadly wound. And in Homily 41: ✳ A person must keep himself from vices not only after penance, but also before penance while he is healthy, because if he waits until the end of life, he does not know whether he will be able to receive penance itself and confess his sins to God and the priest. ✳ From St. Leo, Letter 80 to the bishops of Campania: That presumption against the apostolic rule, which I recently heard some there were committing by unlawful usurpation, must by all means be removed by an established decree: namely, that a written confession listing each kind of sin be made public. It is more fitting for consciences to be disclosed to priests alone in secret confession. Although the fullness of faith seems praiseworthy when a person does not hesitate, for fear of God, to be ashamed before other people, yet since not everyone’s sins are such that those who seek penance dare to make them public, let this most objectionable custom be removed, lest many be kept from the remedy of penance because they are ashamed or fear that their deeds will be disclosed to their enemies, who might strike them under the law. For that confession is enough which is first offered to God, then also to the priest, who approaches as an intercessor for the penitents’ sins. Then more people will be moved to penance if the confessor’s conscience is not made public to the people’s ears. And in Letter 91 to Theodore of Fréjus: Jesus Christ, the mediator between God and human beings, ✳ entrusted this power to the leaders of the Church, so that they might assign an act of penance to those who confess, and, after purifying them through salutary satisfaction, admit them to communion in the sacraments through the door of reconciliation. — ✳ From Victor of Vita, bk. 2 of The Vandal Persecution, where he relates that the African faithful, seeing their pastors taken from them and exiled by order of the tyrant Hunneric, cried out: To whom do you leave us, wretched as we are, as you go to your crowns? Who will baptize these little ones in the waves of eternal water? Who will confer the gift of penance upon us and free those bound by the bonds of sin through the indulgence of reconciliation? For it was said to you: Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Who will bury us when we die with solemn prayers? etc. — From Sidonius Apollinaris, Letter 14 to Polemius: I want you to know that things are not the same before the judge of the world as before the judge of the civil court. For just as one who does not conceal his own crimes from you is condemned, so among us the one who confesses them to God is absolved. Just before this, he indicated that this confession is made to God through priests, saying: We open the foul ulcer of our consciences with the knife that will heal it, etc. — From Julian Pomerius, to whom bk. 2, ch. 7 of On the Contemplative Life is more plausibly attributed: Those whose sins are hidden from human knowledge, neither confessed by themselves nor made public by others, if they refuse to confess or amend them, will have as witness the God they now have, and as avenger the same God. What does it profit them to escape human judgment if, persisting in their evil, they are going to suffer eternal punishment when God repays them? But if they become their own judges and avengers of their iniquity, and here impose on themselves the voluntary punishment of the strictest correction, they will exchange eternal torments for temporal punishments, and extinguish the fires of eternal fire with tears flowing from true compunction of heart. — From the life of St. Eligius, Bishop of Noyon, written by St. Audoin, Archbishop of Rouen, ch. 7: When Eligius had reached manhood, wishing to present himself to God as a sanctified vessel and fearing lest some sins frustrate his heart, he confessed before a priest all his deeds from adolescence onward; then, imposing a severe penance upon himself, he stoutly resisted the struggle of the flesh with the fervor of the spirit.” ✳ — From Sozomen, bk. 7 of the History, ch. 19: Since to sin not at all belongs to a more divine nature than the human, God commanded that pardon be given to penitents, and it is necessary to confess sins in order to obtain pardon. — ✳ “St. John Climacus, in his book entitled The Ladder of Paradise, step 3, offered these words in support of confession: Before all else, let us confess our faults to our excellent judge alone; and if he commands it, we are ready to confess them to everyone. He considers this confession so necessary that he says there: For this reason I now urge them by this example to confession, without which no one will obtain remission. On that same step of his Ladder, he explains how useful confession made to a superior—that is, a bishop, abbot, or other priest—is: Whoever constantly turns over the confession of sins in his mind is restrained by it like a bridle, lest he sin. For afterward we admit securely what must be concealed and buried in darkness. And further: Do not disdain to make confession with a humble spirit to your helper, namely the priest, as to God. — John, abbot of Raithu, at whose urging St. John Climacus composed the Ladder of Paradise, wrote scholia on that book while its author was still alive. On the words cited above, “without which no one will obtain remission,” he says in support of confession: That we are bound to confess our sins simply by necessity of the divine command is clear from the apostolic traditions and the rules laid down for the Catholic Church by the Holy Spirit. By observing their canons and institutions, confessing our sins to God’s priests according to their command, we may become worthy to receive pardon and remission. These words leave the opponents no escape; they must admit that in that age the faith and practice concerning confession were the same as those now maintained by the Roman Church.” ✳

From Gregory, Homily 26 on the Gospels: Lazarus is told, “Come out,” as if it were plainly said to anyone deserving the penalty of sin: “Why do you hide your guilt within your conscience? Come out now through confession, you who hide below by denying it.” Let the dead man therefore come out—that is, let the sinner confess his guilt—and let the disciples who come out loose him, so that the Church’s pastors may remove the punishment he deserved, since he was not ashamed to confess what he had done. — On the words of James 5, “Confess to one another,” Bede says: Let us confess our daily and lighter sins to one another as equals, and believe that we are saved by their prayer. But let us disclose the uncleanness of graver leprosy to a priest according to the Law, and take care to be purified at his judgment, in the manner and for as long as he orders. ✳ “These words make clear that there are two kinds of confession: of venial sins, which we ought to confess to one another and for which we obtain pardon with the aid of the Lord’s Prayer; and of mortal sins, which are leprosy of the soul and must be disclosed to a priest.”

THE HERETICS REPLY that by Bede’s “uncleanness of graver leprosy” are meant not all mortal sins, but only the crimes of heresy, idolatry, Judaism, and schism. They prove this from bk. 5 of his Commentary on the Gospel of St. Luke, ch. 69, p. 421 of the Basel edition, where Bede, on the words “When he saw them, he said: Go, show yourselves to the priests,” says that lepers are those infected, as if by different colors, with heretical depravity, pagan superstition, Jewish perfidy, or fraternal schism, and that these people alone are bound to show themselves to priests (the whole passage is transcribed among the objections). They also prove this to have been the Venerable Bede’s meaning from William, formerly abbot of the monastery of Goffridus. — Against this: From the fact that in the passage last cited Bede understands leprosy to mean certain sins expiated by public penance, it is inferred without reason that in every other passage he means only those sins and no others. On the contrary, it is clear that he commonly uses leprosy to signify any mortal sins, as in his Commentary on ch. 8 of St. Matthew, bk. 11, p. 32, where, of the leper sent by Christ to the priests, he says: Mystically, this man signifies the human race sick with sins, cleansed by the Savior’s outstretched hand, that is, by the incarnate Word. But by the Incarnation we were cleansed from absolutely all sins; therefore here he signifies all mortal sins by leprosy. That in the passage we cited he also understands all mortal sins by leprosy is clear from his general distinction: he separates lighter and daily sins from graver ones, or mortal sins, so that we confess the former to one another and the latter to a priest. — For the rest, we do not deny that, 300 years after the Venerable Bede, William, whom we have cited, had anticipated this opinion, holding that Bede thought only the four aforementioned kinds of sin were subject to the law of confession. But William’s student, Goffridus, Abbot of Vendôme, openly opposed this opinion in Letter 16 of bk. 5 of his letters, published by Father Sirmond in 1610. — From his words, too, we have an unanswerable testimony that the law and practice of confession existed in the Church 200 years before the Council of Lateran, which the heretics babble introduced confession. Goffridus says to William: It is necessary that whoever is defiled by these sins (namely heresy, idolatry, Judaism, and schism) confess not only to a priest, as is done in other cases, but to the whole Church, and so return to the unity whose faith they had formerly attacked.… But the Lord himself heals and corrects other vices. Although the Lord heals and corrects all things that are healed, some are nevertheless forbidden to be healed and corrected by him directly: namely, those things disclosed privately to him in confession so that they may be healed. I tell you that the one who is known to stand in his place certainly has power to forgive all sins by confession and penance, etc. ✳ — From Rabanus, Bishop of Mainz, bk. 7 on Ecclesiastes: Whoever exceeds measure in the desires of the flesh and is weighed down by them must vomit out the foulness of his sins through confession and thus return to his former health through fasting and bodily discipline. — ✳ “Nicephorus Callistus, who flourished in the seventh century, left us an outstanding testimony about the use and necessity of auricular confession in the third fragment, translated into Latin and printed with the two other surviving fragments from him in vol. 7 of the Library of the Fathers, Cologne edition of 1618, pp. 429–430: The office of binding and loosing was entrusted to the bishops themselves by our most merciful Lord God. Therefore, formerly everyone had to go to those bishops, disclose their hidden things to them, and receive either reconciliation or rejection. I do not know what happened to make this practice less observed. Perhaps the bishops, worn out by the unpleasantness of the task and the tumultuous press of crowds, thought they had transferred the work to monks—to those, that is, who had truly been tested and could be useful to others; for they allowed nothing of this sort to the inexperienced and unlearned. — Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz, under Pepin’s reign, more than 400 years before the Council of Lateran, around the year 760, prescribed a rule for the canons of Metz, published by Father Lucas d’Achery of the Congregation of St. Maur in vol. 1 of the Spicilegium, ch. 32, under the title Order for Receiving Penance and Making Confession. It begins: This is the rule of our penance and confession, which we must perform before God and his priests alike. That is, in each year, on three occasions—that is, during three Lents—the faithful people shall make their confession to their priest; whoever does more does better. Who will not understand from the continuous text of that chapter that this confession had to include all mortal sins, even the most hidden? Afterward inquire carefully whether he has evil deeds with him that separate a person, as the Apostle says, from the kingdom of God. These are evil thought, evil and idle speech, hatred, envy, detraction, cursing, feasting, obscene speech, buffoonery, dissembling, carnal desire, etc. If he wishes to leave these sins, have him confess and finally say: “My sins in deeds, words, and thoughts are many.” Then assign him a measured canonical penance. Care must be taken that those who fall into grave sins and those who offend in some lighter things are not judged alike; medicine must be applied according to the disease. — In the same century flourished Egbert, Archbishop of York, whose penitential contains many passages from which the parts and conditions of auricular confession can be understood individually; it would be too long to transcribe them here. — At about the same time the kings of France had as confessors and counselors men distinguished in piety and learning, as we learn from the life of St. Ansbert, Bishop of Rouen and successor to St. Audoin, found in vol. 2 of the Acts of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, p. 1054, where St. Ansbert is said to have been the confessor of King Theodoric. — Alcuin, abbot and teacher of Charlemagne, says in Letter 26: What does priestly power loose if it does not examine the bonds of the one bound? The work of physicians will cease if the sick do not show their wounds. If the wounds of the body await the hand of a physician of the flesh, how much more do the wounds of the soul require the comfort of a spiritual physician? — Theodulf, Bishop of Orléans, Alcuin’s contemporary, says in the capitulary he made for the priests of his diocese, published by Father Sirmond in 1646, ch. 31: Confessions must be made of all sins committed either in deed or in thought. And further: When someone comes to confession, he must be asked carefully how and on what occasion he committed the sin he admits having committed, and penance must be assigned according to the nature of the deed. He must be persuaded to confess his evil thoughts as well, and the priest must name each of the vices among the eight principal ones (which he listed above) and receive his confession of it. — Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims, in Opusculum 40 to Hildebold, Bishop of Soissons, vol. 3, p. 687, says: Finally, as if adding something superfluous, since I do not doubt you have done these things, I remind your good devotion that, besides this general confession, you should strive to confess specifically and individually to God and the priest whatever you know you have committed from the beginning of your life up to the present. — Paschasius Radbertus, Abbot of Corbie, who died in 851, says in his Commentary on the Gospel of St. Matthew, ch. 11, p. 676: Just as under the Old Law the priest makes clean or unclean by discerning, so here the bishop or presbyter binds or looses—not those who are guilty or innocent according to his own judgment, but according to his pontifical office, once he has heard the variety of their sins and knows who must be bound and who loosed. — Theodorus Studites, writing near the end of the eighth century, relates in the life of St. Plato, printed in vol. 6 of Lives of the Saints, p. 270, collected by the Carthusian Laurentius Surius, Cologne 1618, that Plato regarded divine readings as play and church attendance as a spectacle, and used to confess the hidden thoughts and deeds of his mind to those who presided over him; this was a great sign of his piety. That this kind of confession pertains to all Christians is shown by these words from his Homily 36 to the monks: Someone may say, “Our nature is careless and prone to fall.” I admit it; but whenever this happens, confession, repentance, and contrition of heart bring an easy return to the former state. And Homily 122: Therefore let us use frequent confession, since confession is a bridle against sin. — The monk Angelomus wrote several works under Lothair, which are found in vol. 9 of the Library of the Fathers, Cologne edition of 1618. In his commentary on bk. 4 of Kings, ch. 12, he writes in support of confession: No one should trust his own judgment, but should know rather that confession of sins and penance must be carried out by the judgment of priests, who have the knowledge to distinguish clean from unclean and judge the mark of leprosy. — Ralph, monk of the Abbey of St. Sermer in Flavigny, in the diocese of Beauvais, says in bk. 3 of his Commentary on Leviticus, ch. 7, on the words “He who cannot offer birds, let him offer fine flour”: What is fine flour, unless it signifies the disclosure through confession of hidden thoughts and crimes, which are known only to the sinner himself? And further: Let him do what is in his power: let him offer fine flour and disclose to the priest through confession the evils he had concealed within himself.… For it is right that the one who confesses his sins complete that confession, laying everything he can recall before the Lord, revealing some things and concealing none. That Ralph considered this confession necessary is clear from the same chapter: Just as a person cannot examine whether such a confession is true or false, so he cannot judge it or promise the one confessing a sure hope of pardon. For this plainly implies that there can be no hope of pardon without a good confession. — Peter de Honestis, called Cardinal Damian, who flourished in the eleventh century, says in Sermon 58 on St. Andrew, p. 287 of the Lyon edition of 1623: The fourth step is confession by the mouth: it must be made wholly, for one part of the sins must not be told while another is concealed. He had already indicated that this confession must be made to priests with these words: When you resolve to emerge from the abyss of vices, let your chief refuge be the one to whom your soul has been entrusted, whom the Lord has set over your head. And immediately: Let him take care never to mention anything he has received under the seal of confession, or to agree with anyone who speaks of it. And in the same place: God compels us to confess, he who sees us; if we are ashamed to speak here, what will happen in that great confusion where all things will be laid open to everyone? That is, on the day of the final judgment. Finally, at the end: Behold, I have discussed the sacrament of confession as well as I could, though not as fully as I wished.

We may gladly add what is reported in vol. 4 of d’Achery’s Spicilegium, ch. 12, among the ancient customs of the monastery of Cluny, collected by the Venerable Peter, abbot general of the whole Cluniac Order, in 1122: If anyone needs to come to confession for some offense, he approaches a priest.… First, lying prostrate with his whole body, he asks him for pardon; when the priest orders him to rise, after sitting down he says what he has to say. If something of the kind has happened to him at night which we discreetly call a weakness, before confession he says the seven penitential psalms, or, if he does not know the psalms, the Lord’s Prayer seven times. After he has confessed, on that day he does not kiss the Gospel book, approach for the kiss of peace, or make an offering. Hence auricular confession of hidden sins is inferred.

It would not be difficult to add to all these ancient testimonies more recent ones from the writings of Hugh and Richard of St. Victor, Peter the Venerable of Cluny, Peter of Blois, Peter, Abbot of Celle, and countless others who flourished before the pontificate of Innocent III. But since they carry less weight with the heretics, as they come closer to the time of the Council of Lateran, I pass them by here, adding only St. Bernard’s authority as the final confirmation. ✳

From Bernard, Sermon To the Knights of the Temple, ch. 12: What shall I say of Bethphage, where the sacrament of confession and the mystery of the priestly ministry are contained? If confession is a sacrament of divine law… The word in the sinner’s heart works salutary contrition; the word in his mouth removes harmful shame, lest it impede necessary confession. Therefore confession is necessary even for those whose hearts are contrite; yet priests… do not absolve even the contrite unless they have seen him and he has confessed.

THE HERETICS REPLY that when the councils and holy Fathers speak of the confession that must be made, they mean only either a general and indistinct confession, such as is made in the office of Prime, at the beginning of Mass, and at Compline, or only public confession of sins, such as was very common among the faithful in the early Church. Neither kind of confession is necessary by divine law, since each is required only by ecclesiastical institution; hence, as times and churches vary, each kind of confession is conducted differently. Therefore, and so on. — Against this: The holy Fathers and councils commend the confession instituted by Christ the Lord, in which a priest hears the varieties and distinctions among sins, including those that are hidden and lie entirely within the mind. Accordingly, they do not speak only of public and indistinct confession. Furthermore, public confession was made only before the priest-penitentiary, who was appointed to hear the faithful’s public confessions and penances. But the holy Fathers speak of confession to be made not only to one priest: Origen advises that one carefully consider which priest, as a physician, to confess to, and seek among many the wiser and more experienced one to whom the soul’s illnesses and weaknesses may be disclosed. Moreover, only one priest was appointed to receive public confessions, but one could not suffice to hear all the confessions of the faithful in a city. Finally, public confession presupposed another, secret confession made to a priest, by which he would consider which sins the penitent should publicly disclose for his own good and the Church’s edification. Hence, as Sozomen, to be cited below, reports, that priest-penitentiary had to be prudent and discreet about secrets, both to prescribe which sins should be disclosed or withheld and to guard the seal of confession faithfully and prudently in concealing hidden crimes. Therefore neither the councils nor the holy Fathers speak of public and indistinct confession.

THEY REPLY, first, that when the Fathers and councils speak of private and secret confession, they only imply that it is practiced as counsel, for the comfort and instruction of simple people, not by divine command as a remedy for sin. — Against this: The Fathers and councils speak of the confession that was necessary to obtain remission of sins and loosen their bonds. For Tertullian says in bk. On Penance, ch. 9: Confession of sins relieves as much as concealment aggravates. And in ch. 10: Is it better to lie hidden under condemnation than to be absolved openly?… If you hesitate about exomologesis, consider hell in your heart, which exomologesis extinguishes, etc.

ARGUMENTS OF THE HERETICS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE ARE PROPOSED AND ANSWERED. — THE HERETICS FIRST OBJECT that Scripture contains various texts by which they try to prove that confession of sins is not necessary to obtain their remission and was not commanded under the Gospel Law. First, because God promises in Ezekiel 8³ that whenever a sinner groans, he will live, and God will remember his iniquities no more. Second, observance of the Gospel Law is far more pleasant and lighter than that of the Mosaic Law, according to the words of Christ the Lord in Matthew 18⁴: My yoke is sweet and my burden is light. But under the Old Law the Jews were not bound to confess their sins individually in order to obtain pardon for them; therefore Christians should not be bound to do so either. Third, priests of the New Law must remit sins in no other way than Christ remitted them, since they are ministers of Christ the Lord and act as his representatives. But whenever Christ the Lord remitted sins, he did not require prior confession and particular accusation of them, as is clear from the examples of Mary Magdalene, the paralytic, and the Canaanite woman. Therefore penitents need not enumerate each sin before priests in order to be absolved by them; it is enough to acknowledge generally that they are sinners and seek pardon from God through the priests’ ministry. — I deny the consequence, and in reply to the first I say: I grant that pardon is promised to a sinner who groans and keeps the precepts God established for each law concerning sin; I deny it of one who does not fulfill such precepts. Thus under the Old Law certain legal ceremonies had to be observed and offerings made for someone to obtain pardon for certain sins. Likewise under the New Law, to obtain such remission one must have recourse to receiving the sacraments appointed to cleanse sins. Groans and tears can do nothing for a penitent unless he receives those sacraments in fact or by intention. Otherwise baptism would not be necessary to cleanse iniquities, and a person could be saved without the commanded acts of faith, hope, and charity—an absurdity the heretics themselves readily acknowledge with us. Thus unless someone confesses sins in fact or by intention, he does not groan as he ought, since he is unwilling to apply to his wounds and illnesses the remedies that God has ordained as absolutely necessary. — To the second I say that the obligation of confession does not prevent the New Law from being far easier and lighter than the Mosaic Law. For under the New Law, once remission of sins has been granted, attrition of heart joined to the sacrament suffices to obtain remission; under the Old Law attrition was insufficient, and perfect contrition was required, demanding such firm and constant detestation of sin that perhaps few under that law—where grace did not flow so abundantly—could exercise such perfect contrition. Moreover, the usefulness of confession alleviates and softens its difficulty and burden. The Council of Trent says this in sess. XI, ch. 5: The difficulty of this kind of confession and the shame of disclosing sins might indeed seem burdensome, were it not lightened by so many and such great benefits and consolations that are most certainly conferred through absolution on all who worthily approach this sacrament. Tertullian explains more elegantly the benefits and advantages gained from disclosing sins in bk. On Penance, ch. 12: If you hesitate about exomologesis, consider hell in your heart, which exomologesis will extinguish, and first imagine the greatness of the punishment, so that you will not doubt that remedies can be obtained. After describing the torments of the underworld, he concludes that these penitential labors should be undertaken willingly, since by these remedies we avert the eternal punishments prepared for us: Since you know, then, that against hell, after those first memorials of the Lord’s baptism, there are still second aids in exomologesis, why do you abandon your salvation? Why do you delay being reproved, when you know that this can heal you? He develops this at length afterward. — St. Pacian likewise exhorts penitents to confession and satisfaction: If you hesitate at the torment of exomologesis, remember hell, which exomologesis will extinguish for you. Then, after describing the pain of hell through various comparisons, he teaches the faithful when and how it can be extinguished: Remember, brothers, that there is no exomologesis in the underworld, nor can penance be granted then, when the time for doing penance has passed. Make haste while you are alive.… By the faith of the Church I beg you, brothers; by my concern for you; by the common souls of us all, I implore and entreat you: do not be ashamed in this body, do not be ashamed, do not be reluctant to seize the timely remedies of salvation as soon as possible, to lay low your soul’s diseases, to wrap your body in the sacred, etc. To the extent that you have not spared yourselves punishment, to that extent God will spare you. If memory of labors already endured is pleasant, as the proverb says, how much more pleasant are labors whose fruit is so great and whose reward so abundant? Moreover, the burden of confession wholly serves the penitent’s benefit, since he has nothing to fear from disclosing sins of this kind to a priest, who is strictly bound to keep the seal. In addition, he has that tranquility of mind and confidence that his sins have been remitted by God, since he has taken every possible care to detest and confess them. For although he does not have perfect contrition, it is enough that he has attrition, by which his mind is turned away from sin and does not obstruct the sacrament’s efficacy. — To the third I say that although priests absolve sins only by the authority delegated and entrusted to them by Christ, it does not follow that they must loose sins in the same way as Christ the Lord. Since he possessed full and independent authority and knew all human acts and dispositions perfectly, he could remit sins without any prior particular accusation, and could also forgive them freely without requiring satisfaction. It is otherwise with priests of the New Law, who have been delegated by God as judges not only to loose sins but also to retain them and prescribe penalties according to the greater or lesser number and gravity of sins. They must therefore have distinct knowledge of the sins; they cannot have it, especially concerning hidden sins, unless the penitent himself makes them known through confession. Confession is therefore necessary for this purpose.

THEY OBJECT 2. Many testimonies of the holy Fathers seem to signify that sin can be remitted under the New Law either without any confession or at least by confession made to God alone, not to a human being. Thus St. Ambrose, bk. 10 of On Luke, ch. 22: Peter was sorrowful, he says, and wept because he had erred as a human being. I do not find what he said, but I find that he wept; I read of his tears, but not of satisfaction. What cannot be defended can be washed away; tears wash away the offense that shame forbids one to confess aloud. Likewise St. Augustine, bk. 10 of the Confessions, ch. 3: What have I to do with human beings, that they should hear my confessions, as though they could heal all my illnesses? The human race is curious to know another’s life, but lazy to correct its own. St. Prosper says the same in bk. 2 of On the Contemplative Life, ch. 7: Those whose sins are hidden from human knowledge, neither confessed by themselves nor made public by others, if they refuse to confess or amend them, will have as witness the God they now have, and as avenger the same God. But if they become their own judges and avengers of their iniquity, and impose on themselves the voluntary punishment of the strictest correction, they will exchange eternal punishments for temporal punishments, and restrain the fires of eternal fire with tears flowing from true compunction of heart. He therefore thinks that sinners will obtain pardon even if they do not confess their sins, provided they detest and weep for them. Moreover, Bede, bk. 5 of On Luke, ch. 69, considering the words of Christ the Lord addressed to the lepers he had miraculously cleansed—Show yourselves to the priests—explains them as follows: We find that the Lord sent none of those to whom he had granted these bodily benefits to the priests, except lepers, because the Jewish priesthood was a figure of the future royal priesthood in the Church, through which all who belong to the Body of Christ, the supreme and true Chief of Priests, are preserved. Whoever has been deprived of the true color of faith through heretical depravity, pagan superstition, Jewish perfidy, or even fraternal schism, as though stained by various colors, must come to the Church and show the true color of faith he has received. The Lord himself heals and corrects inwardly in conscience and understanding all other failings of health and, as it were, of the soul’s limbs and senses. Bede therefore thinks that only those afflicted by the uncleanness of spiritual leprosy must necessarily confess to priests, as he says above on James 5—that is, those infected with heresy, Judaism, paganism, or schism. He holds that other faults⁵ do not require a priest’s absolution and therefore do not require vocal confession; they are cleansed by the mutual prayers of equals, that is, any of the brethren, and are healed and corrected inwardly by Christ in conscience and understanding. From all this it is clear, therefore, that sacramental confession is not prescribed for everyone or necessary by divine law. — I deny the consequence. In reply to Ambrose, the Doctor says in d. 17, n. 29: “It may be said that the sacrament of penance was not instituted at the time of Peter’s denial, but after the Resurrection, when Christ said to his disciples, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you forgive,’ etc. Therefore at that time Peter was not bound to confession; nor was he bound after the sacrament was instituted, because his sin had already been blotted out by another remedy before the Resurrection. The same answer can be given concerning all the disciples’ unbelief during Christ’s Passion: afterward they were not bound to confession, because after the Resurrection they repented before the sacrament of penance was instituted. These cases rightly confirm that confession did not belong to the law of nature or the Mosaic Law.” As for St. Ambrose’s words, Tears wash away the offense that shame forbids one to confess aloud, the Doctor says they are not to be understood to mean that an offense is washed away without confession, whether actually or by intention; rather, contrition can be so great that sin is blotted out through it even before confession, although the sin is so grave that the subsequent confession of it is shameful. That is the Doctor’s view. By these words he means, first, that it is no wonder Peter did not have recourse to the sacrament of penance to wash away his offense, because the sacrament had not yet been instituted; it was instituted only after the Resurrection. Second, after the sacrament was instituted, Peter did not have to confess because by the power of his contrition he had already obtained pardon for his sin. Third, Peter’s tears contained a confession of his offense; for it sometimes happens that a person guilty of a crime, when convicted by another, confesses his offense through tears, which he dares not express aloud. Such were Peter’s tears, which made his offense known. For, as St. Ambrose observes in the same place, Peter preferred to confess his sin and be justified by confessing rather than aggravate it by denying it; “the righteous person is his own accuser at the outset,” and therefore he wept: “Modest tears never speak without an advocate; tears confess the crime without violating modesty.” Add to this that Christ the Lord, having supreme power to remit sins, could pardon the offense of Peter, who repented and mourned, without any confession or further satisfaction. — ✳ “The other objection, from Homily 3 of St. Maximus of Turin, On the Penance of St. Peter, is refuted in the same way. The same words of St. Ambrose are found there, and we are all the more willing to apply the same explanation to them because we learn from St. Maximus himself, in the homily on the feast of the most blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, reported in vol. 7 of the Library of the Fathers, p. 32, Cologne edition of 1618, that this power to remit sins was granted to Peter himself and the other Apostles only after the Resurrection.” ✳ — In reply to St. Augustine I say that he is not treating there of sacramental confession, but of a confession that makes satisfaction for past crimes remitted through baptism. It was instituted so that God’s mercy might thereby be more greatly moved and stirred to confer grace, and so that God might be celebrated with praise and thanksgiving; also so that each of the faithful might be moved to amend his life and hope for pardon by this example of penance and satisfaction. Such was the public confession that St. Augustine himself wrote in thirteen books of Confessions about all the sins of his life, to spur himself to more intense and greater compunction of heart, offer greater satisfaction to God, and commend God’s wondrous mercy toward him to everyone. — In reply to St. Prosper I say that he understands there only public confession, which he declares not to be absolutely necessary. For he adds: “Those who hold some ecclesiastical rank and secretly commit a crime will more easily please God if they acknowledge their crime voluntarily, rather than being convicted by a human judgment; they either attest to it through their own confessions or, while others remain unaware of it, impose on themselves the sentence of voluntary excommunication and, separated from the altar they served not in spirit but in office, mourn their life as though it were dead.” That he is really speaking there only of public confession, by which sins are declared to a multitude, is clear from the words while others remain unaware: he means that sins are sometimes remitted without this sort of public confession, but not without private confession, through which sinners can be said to become judges and avengers of their own iniquity. Before they approach the sacramental tribunal, they themselves acknowledge and condemn their sin and exact from themselves the penalties imposed by the priest. — Finally, in reply to Bede, I answer that by those words he excludes only public confession, which must be made to the whole Church by one who attacks the Church’s common faith, such as those who afflict the Church through heretical depravity, pagan superstition, Jewish perfidy, or schism. All these must perform public confession and penance in order to obtain pardon. Other private faults, however, need not be disclosed publicly in this way; it is enough to disclose them to a priest in private confession, so that the Lord may correct such illnesses through that priest, who acts in God’s place and through whose ministry God remits and heals all confessed crimes.

✳ “THE OBJECTIONS drawn from the scholastic Doctors and Gratian, as well as from the practice and teaching of the Greek Church, are ANSWERED.” — THEY OBJECT 1. If confession were of divine law, there would never have been doubt in the Church that it must be made as necessary; yet many theologians and Doctors, and Gratian, the collector of the canons, called this into doubt and said that many others had already done so. For St. Thomas, examining in In IV Sent., d. 17, whether it is enough to confess to God alone, says: The Master and Gratian set this down as an opinion; but now, after the Church’s determination under Innocent III, it must be considered heresy. St. Bonaventure agrees with him in the same distinction, and rightly so. For the Master of the Sentences, bk. 4, d. 17, says: For even learned men are found to hold different views on these matters, because the Doctors seem to have handed down varied and almost opposing teachings about them. And Gratian, the collector of the canons, asks in d. 1 of On Penance: Can anyone satisfy God by contrition of heart and secret satisfaction alone, without confession by the mouth? For some say that anyone can merit pardon for a crime without confession made to the Church of God and the judgment of a priest. Further, in the same distinction, on the canon Omnis, he says: Therefore sin is not remitted in confession, since it is proved to have been remitted already; confession is made, then, to show penance, not to obtain pardon. Just as circumcision was given to Abraham as a sign of righteousness, not as a cause of justification, so confession is offered to a priest as a sign of pardon received, not as a cause of remission to be obtained. And on canon Quamvis in the same distinction, after citing canons on both sides, Gratian adds: We have briefly set out the authorities and arguments on which each view of satisfaction and confession rests; to which of these one should adhere is left to the reader’s judgment, for each has wise and religious men among its supporters. Therefore it was not always known in the Church that oral and sacramental confession was necessary for salvation. — ✳ “I answer: There has never been any reasonable doubt about the necessity of sacramental confession, since it follows clearly from the power to bind and loose given to priests and from the Church’s perpetual practice and tradition. If some Doctors in the time of the Master of the Sentences used to support confession made to God alone, Lombard himself was far removed from their error, as is clear from d. 17 of bk. 4 of the Sentences: For just as interior penance is commanded to us, so too are confession by the mouth and exterior satisfaction, if a priest is available. Hence the person who does not intend to confess is not truly penitent. And in the next paragraph of the same distinction he concludes: From these and other points it is shown beyond doubt that confession must be offered first to God, then to a priest, and that one cannot otherwise enter Paradise if the opportunity is available. From these words, “it is shown beyond doubt,” we understand plainly that Lombard did not consider doubtful the view of those who denied the necessity of confession. Nor do the words cited in the objection favor them. He did not say that the ancient Doctors had fallen into that erroneous opinion because they handed down varied and almost opposing teachings about these matters, but because they seem to have handed them down. Nothing prevents the novelty of this opinion from having provided some occasion for the decree of the Council of Lateran and the canon Omnis utriusque sexus, etc. Besides, it is not so unusual for false opinions to occupy the minds of learned men before the Church has judged them. Before the Council of Nicaea the Fathers did not speak so precisely about the mystery of the Trinity; before the Pelagian heresy arose, the Greek Fathers had not penetrated the mystery of grace and predestination so deeply. — As for Gratian, we read in dialogue 18 of Antonio Agustín’s On the Correction of Gratian: Some think these two treatises on penance are not Gratian’s. And farther on: “I found these words in a note: This treatise on penance does not seem to be Gratian’s, but someone’s a little earlier; it seems to have been transferred here in its entirety and is absent from the ancient copies.” Therefore it is not fully established that Gratian considered this opinion about confession doubtful and uncertain; and if Gratian himself did so, he did not lend his authority to that new opinion that confession should be made to God alone. If we are to believe St. Bonaventure, bk. 4 of the Sentences, d. 17, On Sacramental Confession, part 2: The Master and Gratian cite this in their decretals, he says, as an opinion; yet both disapprove it and determine the contrary. Moreover, there is no room for doubt that Gratian’s entire work abounds in many errors and mistakes, as we learn more fully from the Roman corrections and the dialogues of Antonio Agustín.” ✳ Hence Gregory XIII, in the Bull for the emendation of the Decree, clearly indicates that Gratian and other authors of canon law fell into certain errors, but should nevertheless be pardoned in some measure because that matter had not yet been clearly defined in their time, as it became known after the definitions of the ecumenical councils of Lateran, Florence, and Trent, which were later than they. For Gratian wrote the Decree around the year of the Lord 1150. Moreover, among all the canons and authorities Gratian cites against the necessity of confession, there is no canon that clearly proves confession is unnecessary, and none that cannot readily be explained either as referring to public confession not required for all sins, or to remission of sin obtained through contrition of heart and confession of the mind made to God alone before sacramental confession—which we certainly do not deny.”

URGENT. The necessity of Confession was not always acknowledged and accepted in the Church, whose observance many Churches did not judge necessarily binding; but this is not so with the observance of Confession. For the Greeks assert that it is to be made to God alone, as Gratian himself teaches in the final chapter, De Poenit., d. 1, on the authority of Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, a Tharsian by birth and consequently brought up among the Greeks, whom, Baronius says under the year 668, Pope Vitalian sent to England. Theodore writes in his Penitential: Some say that sins ought to be confessed to God alone, as the Greeks do; others judge that they ought to be confessed to priests, as nearly the whole holy Church does. Both practices take place within the holy Church, not without great fruit: the former, provided that it is to God alone, is the practice of the perfect (who, as the Gloss there says, have only venial sins and therefore do not need a special oral Confession), so that we may say with David: “I made my sin known to you, and I did not conceal my injustice. I said: I will confess my injustices against myself to the Lord”; and you forgave the impiety of my sin. Nevertheless, we must follow the institution of the Apostle, that we confess our sins to one another and pray for one another, that we may be saved. Thus Confession made to God alone, which is the practice of the just, purges sins; whereas Confession made to a priest teaches how those sins are purged. For God, the author of salvation and holiness, often provides this remedy of his penance by an invisible administration, and often through the ministry of physicians, that is, through the absolution of priests. Thus Theodore.

I answer, setting aside the various answers of others, that the words (as the Greeks do) seem to have slipped into Gratian's text through the ignorance of an unskilled scholiast, from the margin to which they had been prefixed. For these words are found neither in the Capitularies nor in canon 32 of the second Council of Chalon under Leo III, whose entire canon seems to have been taken from Theodore's Penitential. An indication of the soundness of this answer is that at the Council of Florence, where all those matters in which the Greeks differed from the Latins were discussed, no mention was made of the Greeks'⁶ failure to practice Confession—except that Pope Eugenius asked certain Greek doctors why their priests did not confess their sins before celebrating the sacrifice, as if Eugenius had assumed that oral Confession was in use among the Greek laity, since he questioned them only about their priests. Arcadius, however, an expert in Greek rites, writes, in treating the sacrament of penance, that the abuse among Greek priests of not confessing was introduced because of the severity of the penitential canons: in various canons of penance that he cites, bishops and priests are ordered, on account of certain sins, to remain suspended from office while they confess them. Moreover, certain highly learned Greeks among the schismatics say that this Confession is practiced among them. Nicholas Cabasilas, in Explanation of the Liturgy, ch. 29, plainly teaches sacramental Confession, writing: We know that after Christ's death faith, penance, Confession, and the prayer of priests are also necessary; nor can a person be freed from sins unless these have come first. Jeremias, Patriarch of Constantinople, in his Eastern censure of the Augsburg Confession, ch. 11, accuses the Lutherans of denying the necessity of Confession, for he writes: We say that the one who confesses then obtains a complete cure of his sins, if he recounts all his sins and all their circumstances, insofar as his mind suffices and insofar as he can remember, with a contrite and humbled heart, and resolutely do everything that most directly opposes the sins he has committed, correcting arrogance by humility. But suppose that the words (as the Greeks do) are in Theodore's canon: nothing follows from his attributing the error indefinitely to the Greeks except that some Greeks held it, perhaps only priests in their own case; it cannot be inferred that this custom prevailed among all Greeks. Indeed, Nicephorus Cartophylax says that this custom of confessing was most ancient among the Greeks, in his letter to Theodore on the power of binding and loosing, a fragment of which survives in volume III of the Library of the Fathers. He writes: Of old everyone had to approach the bishops themselves and disclose their hidden matters to them, and thus receive either reconciliation or rejection. I do not know what happened, or why these practices are observed less, though I think that the bishops, wearied by the tedium of the business and the turbulent thronging of the multitude, transferred this task to monks—to those, namely, who are truly approved and are better able to be useful.... If someone is experienced, upright, and also exercises the priesthood, one should approach him first. Whatever Greeks held that error, Theodore does not establish it but entirely rejects it. First, because he sets against it the contrary doctrine of the whole Church, saying that some say sins should be confessed to God alone, as the Greeks do, and others to priests, as nearly the whole holy Church does. For the particle (nearly) excepts only a few Greeks, who, although entangled in this and certain other serious errors, are nevertheless still tolerated in the Church. Second, the particle (nearly) seems to be an addition; it is not found in Ivo of Chartres, part 15 of the Decretum, ch. 155, nor in Burchard, book 19, ch. 149, where that canon is found with only these words: “as the whole holy Church does.” Third, to approve the dogma of the whole Church concerning the necessity of confessing to priests, Theodore says that both practices—to confess to God alone and to confess to priests—take place within the holy Church not without great fruit, because Confession made to a priest presupposes the Confession made to God alone out of humility and contrition of heart. Fourth, he reconciles the contrary opinions in particular—one saying that confession is to be made to God alone, the other that it is also to be made to priests—by saying that for the perfect, that is, the just, and those who are conscious of no mortal sin, it suffices to confess to God alone, and there is no need to confess to priests; for others, however, namely those infected with mortal sin, it is necessary to confess to a priest. Therefore he asserts that we must follow the institution of the Apostle. Only in this way, he says, are we to confess our sins to God, who remits sins, and this is the practice of the perfect, or just, as he says later; nevertheless, we must follow the institution of the Apostle, that we confess our sins to one another; or, as the Capitularies have it: “both practices take place within the holy Church, not without great fruit: only in this way, that we confess to God, from whom comes remission of sins, and that, following the institution of the Apostle, we confess to one another.”

YOU WILL PRESS: From the same canon the efficacy of external Confession made to a priest seems to be denied, for it says: Thus Confession made to God alone, which is the practice of the just, purges sins; whereas that made to priests teaches how those sins are purged. Therefore Confession made to a priest does not remove sins. — I deny the inference: for those words do not deny the efficacy of Confession but determine the manner in which sins are removed, as if he said: God alone, as principal author and chief cause, pardons sins by remission; the ordinary means by which he pardons them is Confession made to a priest. Hence he immediately adds: “For God, the author and giver of salvation and holiness, often provides this remedy of his penance by an invisible administration, and often through the ministry of physicians.” The editors of that Decree observe that these words were so expressed that, by the word operation, the canon teaches that the ordinary means of purging is through the priest's absolutions: for God (they say in the margin), as he immediately adds, grants health often through the ministry of physicians; he does not say merely by showing it.

THEY PRESS AGAIN: The opinion of the canonists could not be made clearer than by the Gloss of John the Teutonic. But at d. 5, De Poenit., at the beginning, he teaches that Confession of sins was introduced by human law, for he says: We must therefore consider when oral Confession was instituted. Some say it was instituted in Paradise immediately after the sin, when the Lord said to Adam, “Adam, where are you?” For he asked so that, when Adam confessed his sin, an example might be given to others for confessing thereafter. But since in that question the Lord seemed to have urged confession less explicitly, afterward he questioned Cain the fratricide more explicitly: “Where is your brother?” Others say that it was first instituted under the Law, when Joshua commanded Achan to confess his crime and he was stoned. Others say it was instituted in the New Testament by James, saying, “Confess your sins to one another.” But it is better to say that it was instituted by a certain Tradition of the universal Church rather than by the authority of the New or Old Testament; and the Tradition of the Church is binding, like a precept. Hence he concludes: therefore Confession of mortal sins is necessary among us, but not among the Greeks, because such a Tradition did not come down among them, just as they do not consecrate with unleavened bread, but with leavened. — I deny the antecedent: “For,” says the Doctor, d. 17, n. 9, “the Church would not have attempted to impose so arduous a precept on all Christians, unless it were a divine precept; or else there is no record of the Church imposing this precept, since before this the Saints held that the precept of Confession was binding. For if the chapter Omnis utriusque sexus is cited, it is clear that it belongs to Innocent III at the Lateran Council; but before that time Augustine had been preaching for more than eight hundred years that Confession was very necessary.... Nor would a canonist readily find a Council or a precept in which the precept to make Confession is properly expressed, as we are speaking of it here.” Hence the Doctor concludes that the Glossator “speaks irrationally”: “For it would be shameful for a theologian to say that something is in the Bible and not know where to find it; and just as inappropriate it must be for a canonist to say that something comes from the universal Tradition of the Church and not find it in the canon, if the canon sufficiently contains the universal Traditions of the Church. Yet he cites no chapter of the canon for this Tradition; he only adds afterward that the Tradition of the Church is binding.” —

✳ “Furthermore, so that no doubt remain that the Greek Church agrees with the Latin Church concerning the faith and practice of Confession, it will not be out of place to consult their own Euchologia, in which are read the prayers and rites containing the whole doctrine of the Church concerning this sacrament. In one of these prayers we find: O Lord, lover of mankind and forbearing toward sinners, hear now also the prayer over your servant, and grant him the means of penance and remission of sins, forgiving him through me, your unworthy servant, every voluntary and involuntary offense. For you, Lord, said to your holy Apostles: Receive the Holy Spirit: whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven them; whose sins you retain, they are retained; and whatever you bind and loose on earth shall be bound and loosed in heaven. And in another prayer we read: May God, who for us became man and takes away the sins of the whole world, in his most gracious kindness himself receive all these things which you, brother, have recounted before my unworthiness, forgiving you everything in this age and in the one to come. And in another: You, good and most merciful Lord, forgive all the things which my spiritual son has confessed to your lowliness with a contrite heart. Finally, in another: I absolve you from all your sins, whatever you have confessed before God and my unworthiness. — This is how the sacrament of penance is administered among the Greeks. The sinner approaches a spiritual father and, sitting with him, confesses his sins. When he has heard them, if he finds the penitent's faults to be light, he gives no absolution, but dismisses him with a friendly admonition to exercise himself in pious works. If the penitent has confessed deadly crimes, he examines them in the Ninth Canon placed beside him and, having assessed them according to the rigor of the canons, chastises him with the penalties they prescribe. Finally, he prays for the penitent and recites over him the prayers cited above. This is not only the discipline of the more recent Greek Church, but also of the ancient Church, as is clear from the Penitential of John the Faster, Patriarch of Constantinople, who was appointed in the place of the deceased Eutychius in the year of the Lord 585. For in that book we read the entire rite for administering this sacrament. The priest takes the penitent and places him before the altar; he sings the Trisagion, psalms, and antiphons with him, recites the prayer written there, makes him kneel with him three times, and then, when he has risen, addresses him thus: Spiritual son, I do not first and foremost receive your Confession, nor do I grant you absolution; rather, God receives the confession of your sins through me (for such a work belongs to him), and through our voice dispenses and grants their remission, as he himself declared in his own voice: Whatever you bind or loose on earth shall be bound or loosed in heaven. Therefore reveal and declare before the holy Angels, and conceal nothing from me of what you have done, as if you were confessing to God, who knows the secrets of hearts; and he, the knower of secrets, will wipe away all that you reveal.... Although it seems to you shameful and disgraceful to reveal deeds liable to shame and disgrace, nevertheless be firmly and fully persuaded that through present shame you are freed from future shame, and by obeying the commandments you become worthy not only of pardon but also of crowns. Then follow the forms of questions about each sin and its circumstances, to which these words are added: And, to speak plainly, he must inquire into everything with the utmost care.... But after he has received the Confession of all the sins, while the confessor lies prostrate, he shall add: May our Lord and Master Jesus Christ God forgive you all the things which you have confessed in his sight to my nothingness. — Similar things are read in the Canonary, or penitential booklet, of John the Monk; in the penitential booklet of an anonymous author, copied by John Morinus from the manuscripts of the library of the Most Eminent Cardinal Barberini; in the book of Simeon of Thessalonica, On the Sacraments; and in the book On the Seven Sacraments of the Church by Gabriel of Philadelphia, Metropolitan, printed at Venice in 1600, where he declares the three parts of penance to be contrition of heart, confession of the mouth, and satisfaction in deed. He defines Confession thus: Confession is the voluntary declaration by the lips made by a sinner on account of former shameful acts, and the voluntary, clear accusation of secrets before one who has legitimate and canonical authority. — From these things it is clear how improperly the heretics of our time invoke the schismatic Greeks in support of their error. For although among them the use of this sacrament is not so frequent, because their discipline has been weakened, just as faith has been emptied, it is nevertheless certain and beyond doubt that they hold the same doctrine of Confession as the Latin Church.” ✳

THE FACT OF NECTARIUS IS PROPOSED AND EXAMINED. — THEY OBJECT 4. If Confession were truly of divine law, no pastor of the Church could rightly abolish it. But Nectarius, Bishop of Constantinople, abolished auricular Confession in his Church on account of a scandal arising from the Confession of a certain noblewoman, as is clear from Sozomen, book 7 of the History, ch. 16, where he recounts the matter thus: “In the Church of Constantinople a priest assigned to penitents discharged this office until a certain noblewoman, on account of the sins she had confessed, was ordered by this priest to fast and supplicate God; and for this reason, because she had disclosed that in the temple, while lingering there, she had been violated by a deacon. When this became known, the people were indignant as if an insult had been inflicted on the Church, and the priests were pressed with the bitterest accusations. Nectarius, therefore, perplexed⁷ as to what remedy to apply to this misfortune, deprived the adulterer himself of the diaconate; and, on the advice of certain people that he should allow each person freely to approach communion in the mysteries according to his own conscience and confidence, he dismissed that priest Penitentiary from office.” He adds that other Eastern Churches imitated this custom. From these things Calvin concludes, book 3 of the Institutes, ch. 4, n. 7: If auricular Confession was God's law, who dared Nectarius repeal and overturn it? Was Nectarius, a holy man of God, approved by all the testimonies of the ancients, accused of heresy and schism? By the same judgment they will condemn the Church of Constantinople, where, Sozomen says, the custom of confessing had not merely been set aside for a time, but had fallen into disuse down to his own memory; indeed, they will accuse not the Church of Constantinople alone, but all the Eastern Churches of defection, for they neglected an irrevocable law—if what they say is true—commanded to all Christians. — I deny the minor premise: for, as Bellarmine, Suarez, d. 17, q. 2, Vazquez, q. 90, a. 1, dub. 3, and others teach very clearly, first, this event may be denied: both because, as St. Gregory declares, book 6 of the Letters, ch. 159, the Apostolic See does not accept Sozomen's history, since it contains many lies; and because Sozomen himself, being strongly devoted to the Novatians, enemies of the sacrament of penance, could have invented this story without basis to favor their party; and because he does not report the story and sequence of this priest Penitentiary's dismissal as a certain, established event of his own time, but as a disputed matter on which different people give different accounts. For he says: What this was, or whence it took its origin, or for what reason it was abolished, others may perhaps report differently; I shall explain what seems to me. By these words he indicates that he is relating something he had not seen or received from trustworthy witnesses, but what he judged more probable. — But since Nicephorus, book 12 of the History, ch. 20, and Socrates, book 5 of his History, ch. 19, recount this event of Nectarius, I answer secondly: Sozomen does not claim that Nectarius abolished auricular and sacramental Confession, as Calvin contends, since in that same passage he asserts that it is necessary to obtain pardon. Rather, he merely reports that public Confession was abolished, along with that ecclesiastical custom by which a priest Penitentiary was appointed to receive public and more serious crimes and to distinguish those for which public penance was to be performed from those for which it was not to be performed publicly. Nectarius abolished this custom because of the scandal that arose. — That this was Sozomen's view is clear from the words he writes before those quoted in the objection: “Since,” he says, “it is known that not to sin is divine and beyond human nature, and God has commanded that pardon be granted to penitents, even if they have frequently offended, and since confession of sins is necessary to obtain pardon, priests from the beginning seem to have regarded it as hateful to pronounce sins as if in a theater, with the multitude of the Church listening. Therefore they appointed to this office a certain presbyter, especially distinguished for integrity of life, and also discreet and wise, to whom those who had sinned came and confessed the events of their lives. He, having prescribed what each ought to do or suffer for each person's offense, absolved them, so that they might exact from themselves the penalties for the sins they had committed. The Novatians, indeed, who had no concern for penance, had no need of this; among the other sects it continues to this day. It is carefully observed in the Western Churches, especially the Roman Church, where the place of the penitents is evident: they stand there sorrowful and as if mourning, and at the end of God's sacrifice, not having received communion, those who were permitted to become true worshippers of God cast themselves face down on the ground with wailing and lamentation. The bishop, meeting them from the opposite side with lamentation, likewise falls to the ground with a cry, and the whole Church of God is drenched in tears. After this the bishop first rises and raises those lying down, and, after praying sufficiently for the penitents, dismisses them privately. Then, each of his own accord, by fasting, abstinence from bathing, food, or other fitting means, afflicts himself for as long as the bishop has prescribed. Finally, when the appointed day has passed and the penalty has been discharged as if a debt, he is absolved from his sins and joined to the people in the Church. The Roman priests have observed these practices from the very beginning down to our own memory. In the Church of Constantinople, however, a presbyter assigned to penitents discharged this office, namely, until the scandal involving a noblewoman occurred.” From this passage of Sozomen it is plainly clear, first, that a certain Penitentiary was appointed to preside over public penances; second, that public penitents disclosed to this priest individually the sins of their whole lives, both public and hidden, in a special Confession—for no other reason was a man of integrity and discretion appointed to this office; for if they had confessed only public sins to him, such great discretion would not have been demanded of him; third, that after privately confessing their lives to the Penitentiary, the penitents, at his command or counsel, later disclosed certain public matters, or even hidden ones, in public Confession. For this reason a wise priest was assigned the office: to prescribe what each person should do for each offense and what penalties they should impose on themselves by fasting, supplication, or even public confession of hidden matters, just as the matron disclosed her liaison with the deacon, though it had been secret. Hence Sozomen disapproves of the dismissal of that Penitentiary, because it removed the restraint on sinning by taking away the shame of those who confessed their own offenses to him. For he immediately adds to the words quoted in the objection: “He dismissed that priest Penitentiary from office, a decision that was soon afterward invalidated; nevertheless, by then, as I think, with age itself and its accompanying laxity and severity beginning gradually to give way to promiscuous and dissolute life—for previously, in my view, sins were fewer both because of the shame of those who declared their own offenses to him and because of the severity of those appointed judges in the matter; above all, that shame belonged to the disclosure of hidden things.” — This answer is confirmed by Socrates, book 5 of the History, ch. 19, who writes as follows: “At that time it seemed good to the Church that the priests who presided over penance in each Church should be removed. The reason was this: from the time when the Novatians had separated themselves from the Church and refused communion with those who had fallen during the persecution under Decius, the bishops of the Churches added a canon that in each Church a certain priest should preside over penance, so that those who had fallen after baptism might confess their sins before the priest appointed for this purpose. This canon still stands firm among other sects; only those who hold the faith of consubstantiality with the Novatians, and agree with them in that faith, rejected the priest Penitentiary. The Novatians, indeed, had never admitted this as a kind of appendage, even at the beginning. Although the bishops now presiding over the Churches maintained this institution for a long time, in the time of Nectarius, bishop, they changed it on account of a certain deed that had then perhaps occurred in the Churches. A certain noblewoman approaches the priest Penitentiary; she confesses in detail the sins she had committed after baptism. The priest commands the woman to devote herself to fasting and continual prayers, so that, together with her Confession of sins, she might show a work worthy of penance. The woman, going further in her confession, accuses herself of another offense and reveals that a deacon of the Church had slept with her. Because this crime was thus disclosed, the deacon was expelled from the Church; a great uproar then arose among the people, who were indignant not only over the crime committed but also because a grave mark of infamy and disgrace had thereby been placed on the Church. Therefore, since the priests were strongly reproached on this account, a certain Eudemon, a presbyter of the Church, an Alexandrian by birth, advised Bishop Nectarius to remove the priest Penitentiary and give everyone free leave to approach the mysteries according to his own conscience; for in this way alone, he said, would the Church be free of every stain of infamy. I myself heard all this from Eudemon and did not hesitate at all to commit it to this history.” — Cassiodorus in the Tripartite History, book 9, ch. 36, and Nicephorus Callistus in the History, book 12, ch. 25, copy and report the same account from Socrates and Sozomen.

From these things it is plainly inferred that Nectarius abolished only three things. First, the authority or office of the priest Penitentiary appointed over public penitents, dismissing him from office either because he had imprudently imposed this on that woman, or because he knew she would disclose it in her public Confession and had not prevented her, or because he had prescribed a longer period of penance for the woman in the Church—hence there arose the occasion for the crime or scandal. Second, he proscribed public penance and its practice, for directing which that priest Penitentiary had been appointed, because that scandal had arisen on the occasion of this public penance. Third, he prohibited public Confession, which was, as it were, a part of public penance and through which the woman's disgraceful act with the deacon became known to the people. But he did not abolish private Confession, nor dismiss the priests appointed by the bishop to receive private and sacramental Confessions, nor take away their power to absolve. This is inferred, first, because he abolished only that Confession which had been instituted on the occasion of the Novatians; but private Confession had long been in use before the Novatians, as is clear from Irenaeus, Origen, etc. Second, he removed only that Confession for which the priest Penitentiary had been specially assigned; but he had not been assigned to hear private Confession, for it could not be that only one priest would suffice to hear the private Confessions of so many people in the very large and populous city of Constantinople, seat of the empire. Third, Nectarius abolished only that Confession which had occasioned the scandal, and whose abolition seemed necessary to quiet the tumult stirred up among the people of Constantinople. This was public Confession, for, according to Socrates, that tumult was stirred up among the people because the woman, going further in her confession, had divulged the disgraceful act committed with the deacon. Nor does it matter that the Greek text of Socrates does not contain the words going further in her confession: for other words added immediately, namely she accuses herself of another offense, plainly show her second Confession. For that self-accusation by which she discloses her disgraceful act with the deacon is an accusation, or Confession, not a private one, which was entirely secret, but a public one through which this crime became known. How could this hidden crime have come to the knowledge of both clergy and people, and have been the cause of the deacon's expulsion from his rank and so great a tumult among the people? Therefore Christo-Phorsonus did not add those words, going further in her confession, to the Greek text of Socrates without good reason in his translation.

YOU WILL PRESS: Nectarius abolished that Confession which a sinner was bound to make before approaching the Eucharist worthily; but this is what we call sacramental Confession. Therefore he abolished it. The minor premise is established. The major is proved: for, according to Socrates, Nectarius gave free leave for each person to approach communion in the mysteries according to his own conscience. According to Sozomen, he allowed each person freedom to approach communion in the mysteries as he himself judged and considered in his conscience. According to Cassiodorus, he left each person to communicate according to the judgment of his conscience. According to Nicephorus, he allowed each person to communicate and partake of the immaculate mysteries according to his conscience and confidence. Therefore he allowed them thereafter to approach the Eucharist without any private sacramental Confession. — I deny the major premise: for the freedom later granted by Nectarius to the penitents consisted in this: before approaching the Eucharist, they were no longer compelled to confess to the priest Penitentiary, but could confess to whichever priest they wished among those appointed by the bishop. For the freedom granted must be understood in conformity with what is reported there, namely, that public penitents were freed from the burden previously imposed on them. That burden was that before approaching the mysteries they had to confess individually the acts of their lives to the Penitentiary, and no one else could absolve them. Nectarius freed them from this obligation, as well as from the burden of public penance and public Confession, by which at times they were compelled to disclose certain matters before the entire multitude of the people. Thereafter they were permitted to communicate without these burdens; but it does not follow that those penitents were permitted to approach the Eucharist without cleansing from sins, and therefore not without private Confession. This is clear even to the heretics against whom we argue, for they say that people ought not to be admitted to the Eucharist unless they have first been examined by a pastor. Hence Melanchthon says in the Augsburg Confession, § On Confession: “Confession has not been abolished among us; for the Body of the Lord is not usually offered unless people have first been examined and absolved.” And Calvin, book 3 of the Institutes, ch. 4, commands “that the sheep present themselves to the pastor whenever they wish to partake of the sacred supper; I will not object to this, and would especially like it observed everywhere.”

YOU WILL PRESS: The Penitentiary, instituted on the occasion of the Novatians, had to be a keeper of secrets, according to Sozomen; one who keeps a secret, according to Cassiodorus; and silent, according to Nicephorus. But if he had been instituted to govern penitents, public penalties, and public Confessions, such strict observance of secrecy and the seal would not have been demanded of him. Therefore he was instituted only to hear private Confessions; and so, once this office was abolished, private Confessions seem to have been abolished. — I deny the minor premise: for, according to Sozomen, he had to prescribe for each person's offense what each ought to do or pay, so that they might exact from themselves the penalties due for their crimes. According to the Tripartite History, he imposed many things according to each person's faults. For this purpose, a most careful examination of hidden faults, intentions, and circumstances was essential, so that he might enjoin satisfactions and penalties proportionate to the offenses and useful to the penitent and the Church, and might even order some hidden matters to be declared in public Confession. But he could not do this without private Confession, which requires a man who is discreet, upright, and prudent. There were therefore two Confessions by which public penitents at that time confessed their sins. One was secret or private, in which, from the beginning of their penance, they disclosed to the Penitentiary each act of their lives, so that they might receive from him the manner and method of penance. The other was public, which they sometimes made as part of satisfaction, when the penitent's benefit or the needs of the Church required it. Socrates indicates both in the penance of a most noble woman. First, the private Confession before the Penitentiary, when she approached that priest and confessed in detail the sins she had committed after baptism. Second, the public Confession before the people, when the priest, having heard the woman's secret Confession, imposed a fine on her and commanded that by fasting and continual prayers, together with Confession of sins, she show a work worthy of penance. While the matron was carrying out this Confession, she went too far in confessing and, perhaps through indiscreet devotion or through the priest's imprudent counsel, disclosed so openly her shameful crime with the deacon that an uproar arose among the people and the deacon was expelled from the Church.

YOU WILL PRESS AGAIN: Women, on account of the modesty and bashfulness of their sex, did not perform public penance. Therefore the matron who gave Nectarius occasion to abolish the Penitentiary did not make a public Confession. — I distinguish the antecedent: they did so less frequently than men, I grant; they never did so at all, I deny. For Jerome says in his Epitaph for Fabiola to Oceanus: “That woman of the highest nobility, because she had married a second husband after repudiating the first—who, we are told, had such great vices that not even a prostitute or a lowly slave could endure them—after the death of her second husband came to her senses so completely that she put on sackcloth, publicly acknowledged her error, and, with the whole city of Rome looking on, before Easter, stood in the order of penitents in the Lateran Basilica, while the bishop, presbyters, and all the people wept; she bowed low, her crime exposed, her face disfigured, her hands rough, and her neck filthy.”

YOU WILL PRESS: Public penance and Confession had prevailed for a long time before the Novatian schism and heresy. Therefore the Confession abolished by Nectarius was not public Confession, but the one we call secret and sacramental. — I distinguish the antecedent: they prevailed in a wholly different way from their being instituted by bishops on the occasion of the Novatian heresy, I grant; in the same way, I deny. I admit indeed that before that Novatian schism most people performed public penance and publicly confessed their sins either to the bishop or to the priest whom they selected from among many designated by the bishop to receive Confessions, as is clear from Origen cited above. For at that time they were not bound to disclose their sins to one priest alone, as happened later on the occasion of the Novatians. The bishops then decreed that public penitents should go to a certain presbyter placed in charge of penances and penitents, to confess their sins to him and fulfill the penance and satisfaction prescribed by him. No mention of the institution of this public Penitentiary is found among the ancient Doctors of the Church before the persecution under Decius and the Novatian schism. But from the time when the Novatians withdrew and separated themselves from the Church, because they refused communion with those who had fallen during the persecution and whom certain prelates had admitted to communion too readily, without due satisfaction and penance—people about whom St. Cyprian complains bitterly in his sermon On the Lapsed—the Church, so as henceforth to counter so grave an evil, established by a new decree that those who had fallen after baptism on account of certain public crimes should not be admitted to participation in the sacred mysteries until they had completed the more private labors of penance prescribed by this Penitentiary. This was so that, against the Novatians, they might show that the Church had some power to remit sins, since they placed a presbyter over penitents so that, after being directed by him through exercises of penance, they could be reconciled by the bishop. It was also so that they might maintain the severity of discipline and place this priest over them, so that through the voluntary penalties of penitents they might make them, in some measure, proportionate to their offenses before receiving them into the mysteries; they would not admit them unless, with the help and guidance of that priest, they had first been cleansed of more serious sins through worthy labors and fruits of penance.

THE HERETICS INSIST: Nectarius abolished that Confession which afterward was no longer practiced in the Church of Constantinople. But every Confession that people were bound to make after this abolition was no longer practiced there. Therefore, etc. The major premise is established from what has been said. The minor is proved from St. Chrysostom, Nectarius's successor in the See of Constantinople, who teaches in many places that one ought not to confess to people but to God alone, especially in homily 2 on Psalm 50, where he says: Tell your sins so that you may wipe them away; if you are ashamed to tell them to someone, tell them each day in your soul. I do not say that you should confess them to your fellow servant, lest he reproach you; tell them to God, who heals them. And in the sermon On Penance and Confession he says: Now, however, it is not necessary to confess before witnesses; let the examination of offenses take place in thought; let this judgment be without a witness; let God alone see you confessing. And in homily 4 On Lazarus: For one ought not to confess to a fellow servant, who might make it public, but to the Lord. Here St. Chrysostom opposes to the Confession he disapproves the one made to God, in the soul and thought, and within one's conscience. Therefore St. Chrysostom disapproves of every Confession made to people. — I deny the minor premise, and in answer to its proof I say that St. Chrysostom disapproves only public Confession, not private Confession. For he speaks of Confession from which reproach might follow; such was public Confession. For, as Origen notes in homily 2 on Psalm 37, when public Confession was made, there were always people present who could reproach the penitent. Hence he says: If such a man, mindful of his offense, confesses the things he has committed and, despite human shame, thinks little of those who reproach him and mark or mock him as he confesses. But Confession made to a priest in the sacrament is not of this kind, for no reproach can follow from it, since it is made without witnesses and priests are bound by the strictest obligation of silence, or the seal. Hence Chrysostom adds: Now, however, it is not necessary to confess before witnesses. For by these words he shows that at some time it had been necessary to confess before witnesses, that is, publicly, but that Nectarius had removed that necessity, so that such public Confession would no longer be a cause and occasion for reproach. Or I say that Chrysostom there is not speaking of sacramental Confession, which must be made by precept, but only of daily Confession. Hence he expressly said in the words cited above on Psalm 50: If you are ashamed to tell them to someone, tell them each day in your soul, etc., as if he said: I do not urge or exhort you to do a great thing, namely, to confess your sins every day to a priest who might reproach you and wound you with his rebukes; rather, I disclose another mode of Confession to you: confess your sins privately to God in your soul each day. Hence he adds: Behold, you have a book in which to write your daily account; take your conscience as your book and write your daily sins. When you have accused yourself on your bed, and suffer no one to trouble you, before sleep comes, bring out the book of your conscience. — He teaches the same in the aforesaid homily on Lazarus, where he urges that if we ever conceive in our soul a corrupt desire, we should suffocate it immediately; but if it has passed into action, we should immediately kill it through Confession. Why, he says, are you ashamed and blush to tell your sins? Take care not to tell a man, lest he reproach you; for you are not confessing to a fellow servant, but to the one who is Lord. By these words he signifies that daily Confession is to be made immediately after we have sinned. Therefore he is not speaking of sacramental Confession, which he nowhere denies, but only of private Confession, which every person can and ought to make so that, through contrition, he may obtain forgiveness of sin.

THEY PRESS AT LAST: What St. Chrysostom's opinion on Confession was is clearly evident from Cassian, his disciple. But Cassian denies that any Confession should be made to people, for in Conferences 20, ch. 8, he says: If shame holds you back and you blush to reveal your sins before people, do not cease to confess them in continual supplication to him from whom they cannot be hidden, who is accustomed to heal without publicizing shame and to pardon without reproach. — I deny the minor premise: for Cassian speaks in the same way as his teacher, either of public Confession, which was made before the people and from which reproach and insult often arose, and not of private Confession made to a priest as the vicar of God or Christ, not as a mere human being. Hence this Confession may be considered to be made to God, because it is made to a man acting in God's place; for the priest serves as Christ's ambassador. Or I say that by those words he exhorts us to a daily examination of conscience and private Confession before God, made each day concerning sins after that examination of conscience. For before the words cited above he says: “Who cannot say: I made my sin known to you, and I did not conceal my injustice? So that by this Confession he may also deserve to add this: and you forgave the impiety of my heart. But if shame holds you back, etc.”

THEY OBJECT 5. Many leading theologians openly admit that Confession was commanded not by divine law, but only by human law. For Hugh of St. Victor, book On the Sacraments, part 14, ch. 14, says that Christ did not give people a precept to confess their sins. The Master of the Sentences, d. 17, sets out opinions both proving and denying the necessity of Confession, and he himself seems to resolve nothing, at least from divine law. And Alexander of Hales, part I, q. 18, member 3, a. 2, says: The Lord did not institute Confession as it was to be practiced by penitents themselves. Finally, St. Bonaventure, d. 17, part 2, a. 1, q. 3, plainly teaches that the Lord Christ did not institute Confession, but that it is a purely human work: Hence, he says, the power of the sacrament was not given to Confession itself, but to Absolution; therefore its institution was rightly left to mere human beings. Therefore Confession is not of divine law.

I distinguish the antecedent: they admit that it is not of divine law explicitly, that is, distinctly and expressly, I grant; tacitly and implicitly, I deny. For they admit that the Lord Christ gave the Apostles, who acted in his place, the power to remit and retain sins, and consequently at least implicitly also commanded that Confession be made, since, as we have said, a priest cannot know which sins are to be remitted and which retained unless the penitent has distinctly declared them. Hugh of St. Victor, the Master of the Sentences, and Alexander of Hales certainly intend nothing else. As for the Seraphic Doctor, however, the difficulty seems greater; nevertheless it can easily be explained. For he distinguishes two things in the sacrament of penance: one formal, which completes the sacrament, namely Absolution, or the power to absolve or heal; the other material, namely the disclosure of sin or sickness. The first, he says, the Lord instituted, when he granted the power of the keys, and in this the power of the sacrament resides; the second, however, he did not institute in itself, but intimated. He gives four reasons for this: “From what has been said,” he says, “four reasons can be drawn why the Lord did not immediately and expressly institute Confession: first, because it was not necessary; second, because he taught that this should be voluntary; third, because it is the sacrament of those who relapse; fourth, because in itself it is a human work.” Hence I believe that he did not institute it in itself; and if he is said to have instituted it, this is to be understood as intimating it and giving it authority.

THE OBJECTIONS OF CALVIN AND HIS FOLLOWERS ARE EXAMINED. — CALVIN OBJECTS, book 3 of the Institutes, n. 16, ch. 1: God neither institutes nor commands impossibilities; but an enumerative Confession of all sins is impossible; consequently it was not instituted by God. Calvin proves the minor premise by various authorities from Sacred Scripture, especially from Psalms 19 and 38, where David testifies that he cannot recount his sins individually: “Who understands offenses? Cleanse me, O Lord, from my hidden sins. And again: My iniquities have passed over my head, etc.” — “That is to say,” Calvin says, “the Prophet understood how great is the abyss of our sins, how many stains of wickedness there are, how many heads this hydra bears and how long a tail it drags. He was not setting out to recite a catalogue, then, but was crying out to the Lord from the depths of evils: I am overwhelmed, buried, and suffocated; the gates of hell surround me; let your hand draw me out, sunk in a deep pit, failing and dying. Who would now think of counting his own sins, when he sees David unable to reckon their number?” These are Calvin's words. — I deny the minor premise: for a particular and enumerative Confession of sins before a priest is just as possible as one before God. Calvin himself, however, admits in n. 18 that it is possible to accuse oneself of all sins before God. For he says: “What, you will ask, then, are individual offenses not to be confessed? Is no Confession acceptable to God unless concluded in those two words, ‘I am a sinner’? On the contrary, one ought rather to strive, insofar as we can, to pour out our whole heart before the Lord: not merely to acknowledge ourselves sinners in a single word, but truly and sincerely to recognize ourselves as such; to consider in our whole thought how great and varied is the stain of sins, not merely that we are unclean, but what our uncleanness is, how great it is, and in how many respects it affects us; not merely that we are debtors, but how many debts weigh upon us and by how many obligations we are bound; not merely that we are wounded, but with how many and how deadly wounds we are pierced: so we believe.” By these words he admits that it is not enough to confess to God generally and to profess before God, in general terms, that one is a sinner; beyond that, after an accurate examination of conscience and a diligent search and scrutiny of sins, the penitent must profess his sins before God. But we require nothing else for sacramental Confession than this accusation of sins before a priest, with the prior examination that prudent men ordinarily use in matters of greater importance.

CALVIN INSISTS: A penitent, even if he devotes every effort of mind, cannot call to account the events of an entire year and gather what he has sinned each day. Experience convinces everyone that when, in the evening, one examines the offenses of only a single day, one's memory is confused; such a crowd and variety of offenses presses upon it. Therefore this enumerative Confession of individual offenses is impossible. — I distinguish the antecedent: if by offenses you mean every human fault, including venial sins, which certainly need not be disclosed in Confession, it is very difficult to recall to mind all the offenses of an entire year, I grant; if you mean the more serious sins that must be disclosed in Confession, I deny. For there is no one who, with a diligent examination of conscience, cannot easily remember all the more serious crimes he has committed over the course of a year. But if any crimes escape the penitent's memory after that diligent inquiry, it will suffice for him to confess generally all those that are hidden and omitted. Calvin cannot contradict this assertion, since he says in n. 18 that when a sinner has poured himself out entirely before God through an accusation of individual sins, he must seriously and sincerely consider that many more still remain and that the recesses of his evils are deeper than he can fully examine; and thus he must cry out with David: Who understands offenses? Cleanse me, O Lord, from my hidden sins.

HE PRESSES: “At least that enumerative Confession disturbs the soul's peace, confidence, and hope in God. For it brings the penitent's conscience into doubt, care, and anxiety that he has not spent enough time searching for his offenses, has not applied sufficient effort, and has passed over many through negligence, for which he could not obtain remission and Absolution. Therefore God is not the author of that Confession, which is a veritable torture, cruelly tormenting the souls of those who have any sense of God.” — I deny the antecedent: for one who has applied all the diligence he could to investigating and confessing his sins has certain peace of mind and confidence that, through the priest's Absolution, he will obtain from God's mercy forgiveness for these sins. Thus his mind is at peace, and he approaches the throne of mercy with confidence; and he strives earnestly to serve God, whom he first knows to be merciful, so that, to the best of his ability, he may repair the injury inflicted upon him by sin.

CALVIN PRESSES AT LAST, book 3 of the Institutes, ch. 7: Before the Lateran Council there was no law of Confession; and at that Council the barbarous wording of the law Omnis utriusque sexus destroys the faith. “For,” he says, “what the good Fathers command—that every person of either sex confess all sins once each year to his own priest—clever jokers wittily evade by saying that this precept binds only hermaphrodites and applies to no one who is male or female.” — I answer: The Lateran Council did not decree that the faithful should confess, for it understood that this had already been decreed by divine law; rather, it decreed that the divine precept of Confession should be fulfilled only once a year by each and every person who has the use of reason. Calvin's objection that the wording is barbarous is frivolous. First, because the Church often disregards the rules of grammar. Second, because this mode of speaking is frequent in Scripture: Deuteronomy 7, “There shall not be among you anyone barren of either sex”; Judges 8, “About three thousand of either sex”; 2 Chronicles 31, “Their children of either sex.” Third, because Pliny Secundus, a most eloquent man, uses this form of speech about Romulus in book 1 of Illustrious Men: “He staged,” he says, “Circus Games, to which, when a multitude of either sex had come, etc.”