THE subject of Confession is uppermost in men's minds. Recent occurrences have fixed the attention of the public upon the question, whether confession to a Priest is of God's appointment; and if so, within what limits the duty is restrained, and according to what rule it must be performed. We propose to answer these inquiries taking the Scriptures for our only guide. There are matters on which we are content to "hear the Church" and abide by its decisions. There are points of discipline in which "the Church hath power;" but this is not one of them. Doctrines of primary importance are involved. God's honour and the majesty of Christ his Son are deeply concerned; and before we can allow ourselves to turn to other sources for instruction we must "hear what God the Lord shall speak" in His written word. The discussion may not be unprofitable even to those to whom the controversy now raging is uninteresting--those, we mean, who, having ascertained the will of God upon the subject, are in no danger of being disturbed by the plausibilities of Romanizing teachers. And they form, we believe, the great majority of our readers.

Confession is of three kinds. We are commanded to make confession of our sins to God, under all circumstances. To the Church, under certain limitations. To one another, when we have wronged our neighbours or caused a weak brother to offend.

In general, whenever confession of sin is mentioned in Holy Scripture it is plain that the confession is intended to be made to God. Heathen nations, as well as churches and individuals, are commanded thus to make devout acknowledgment of their transgression to the high and lofty One inhabiting eternity. Even Nineveh had her day of grace prolonged, when her king and people covered themselves with sackcloth, and sat in ashes, and

cried mightily to God, making confession of their sin. The Israelites were no sooner formed into a nation and intrusted with the oracles of God than we find Moses, their leader and representative, humbling himself, and making confession on his own and their behalf. At every turn of their history, and upon almost every page, we find the national confession of sin enjoined, its performance noticed with approbation, or its neglect denounced as a grievous aggravation of their guilt. To the Jews, as a Church, the duty of confession was taught in one of the most significant of all their ordinances; when "Aaron laid both his hands on the head of the living goat, and confessed over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, and all their sins; putting them on the head of the goat," which was then chased into the wilderness.-The cases of individuals are too numerous to mention. There is scarcely an eminent saint of the Old or New Testament, whose life stands recorded at length in the word of God, of whom it might not be proved, directly or by inferential evidence, that confession of sin entered largely into the spirit of his devotions. In the few models of prayer which have been left us in the Old Testament, how deep and abject are the acknowledgments of sin! The holier the man the more abject his abasement. Nehemiah and Daniel leave a feeling of awe upon our minds, as they take us by the hand and descend with us into the depths of their own souls, and reveal, in those confessions which the Spirit of God instructed them to place on record, their sense of their own vileness. Nehemiah tells us that "he sat down, and wept, and mourned certain days, and fasted and prayed before the God of Heaven, the great and terrible God;" and then "he confessed the sins of the children of Israel;" but not those alone. "Both I and my father's house have sinned; we have dealt very corruptly against Thee; and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the judgments which Thou didst command Thy servant Moses." So Daniel, too, " with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes, prayed unto the Lord his God and made confession." The "man greatly beloved" lies prostrate before God, overwhelmed with a dreadful sense of his own and his people's sin. In neither case was it remorse for any one flagrant transgression, such as David felt when he had slain Uriah and defiled his wife; or after his numbering of the people. The holiness of God, flashing, as it were, into the dark chambers of imagery, revealed to these eminent saints the defilement of their souls; and instantly shame covers them like a garment, and "unto us," they cry, "belongeth confusion of face."

We need not enlarge it was a doctrine universally received; it was expressed in the form of a proverb in the Jewish Church, that without confession of sin mercy was not to be expected from God. "He that covereth his sins shall not prosper; but

whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy." The New Testament teaches every where the same lesson. Let one text suffice. "If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

The devout confession of sin which God requires is, however, far different from the flippant acknowledgment of general unworthiness, or even of particular transgressions, which passes so readily from the lips of unregenerate men. As "no man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost," so neither can any man make true confession of sin until he has been taught of God. Till then, he is unacquainted with the malignity of sin; and how shall he confess his vileness? Till then, he is ignorant of the extent and number of his offençes; and how shall he bewail them with a true, penitent, and contrite heart? The root of bitterness must first be laid bare; the plague of his own heart must first be disclosed, and then only can he sorrow after a godly sort. It is the office of the Holy Spirit to make these discoveries of us to ourselves; and until He moves upon the chaos, darkness reigns within the soul. Self-love persuades that the evil is only superficial; ignorance, loud and clamorous, encourages the delusion. Pride haughtily consents, and Satan meanwhile endeavours, with but too much success, to induce us to forget the past; as if the danger was over when the transgression was forgotten. True confession of sin is in itself an evidence of the work of grace. He whom God hath exalted with His right hand a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance unto Israel, must have "begun a good work in us;" for it is not in man, untaught by the Spirit of God, to perceive his danger, much less to humble himself, though before God alone, with a full confession of his sin.

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And yet, till this be done the intolerable load of sin unforgiven is still upon the conscience. The experience of the sinner, alarmed, but not yet acquainted with the only refuge-the hiding-place from the storm of the wrath of God-is precisely that which David has described;-" When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long; for day and night Thy heavy upon me; my moisture is turned into the drought of summer." Words can scarcely express, much less exaggerate, the misery of such a state. "There is," says an old writer, " warning conscience, and a gnawing conscience. The warning conscience cometh before sin, the gnawing conscience followeth after sin. The warning conscience is often lulled asleep; but the gnawing conscience wakeneth her again. If there be any hell in this world, they which feel the worm of conscience gnawing upon may truly say that they have felt the torments of hell. Who can express that man's horror but himself? Nay, what horrors are there which he cannot express himself? Sorrows are

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met in his soul as at a feast; and fear, thought, and anguish divide his soul between them. All the furies of hell leap upon his heart like a stage. Thought calleth to fear; fear whistleth to horror; horror beckoneth to despair, and saith, Come and help me to torment this sinner. One saith that she cometh from this sin, and another saith that she cometh from that sin; so he goeth through a thousand deaths, and cannot die. Irons are laid upon his body like a prisoner; all his lights are put out at once; he has no soul fit to be comforted. Thus he lieth upon the rack, and saith, that he beareth the world upon his shoulders, and that no man suffereth that which he suffereth. So let him lie, saith God, without ease, till he confess, and repent, and call for mercy."* And now mercy is at hand. The despairing sinner descries the Light of the World afar off, and is drawn by the sweet influences of the Spirit into His presence. "I said"-it is thus the Psalmist proceeds in the recital of his own experience-"I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin." And now he can exult, and cry, "Thou art my hiding-place; Thou shalt preserve me from trouble: Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance." When God bestows the true penitential spirit, the spirit of adoption will not be long withheld.

But sin is of two kinds, and therefore confession must wear two aspects. There is the secret sin, of which God alone is cognizant, and of which confession is to be made to Him alone; and there is the transgression which offends both God and man ;—the more heinous in the sight of God, because, like David's great offence, it was committed in the light of the sun; bringing scandal on the Church; perverting others by false doctrines; or misleading them by a bad example. For such offences confession is due both to God and man. Has a sinner passed a life of ungodliness, scoffing at things sacred, deriding that inward sanctification whereby the Holy Spirit makes us meet for the inheritance of the saints above, or as a backslider in heart crucifying the Son of God afresh, shall not such a man ask pardon of the Church of Christ? Before the Church he has sinned, before the Church shall he not make confession of his sin? He has thrown a stumbling-block in the narrow way, on which some, perhaps, have fallen-fallen to their eternal ruin; he has turned the feet of the lame out of the way; and is no confession due to the Church, aye, and to the world at large, for sins like these? If the offender be a real penitent, he will not, he cannot, hesitate. If the Lord has put away his sin, no sense of shame will be allowed to close his lips in silence. His stubborn heart has given way, his pride and selfishness have been subdued; with Paul, he now accounts himself the chief of sinners;

Henry Smith. Sermons preached at St. Clement Danes, in the reign of Elizabeth.

and he will tell men so, were it only that on this foundation he may build his altar of praise to the glory of His grace who has saved him from the wrath to come.

And these confessions will be public. They will be made before the Church. When Achan had sinned a great sin, involving all Israel in the consequences of his transgression, it was not enough that the proofs of his guilt were brought home to him with conclusive force. Joshua exhorts him thus: "My son, I pray thee give glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession unto Him, and tell me now what thou hast done, and hide it not from me. And Achan confessed his sin in the hearing of all the people. So those sorcerers, of whom we read at Ephesus, converted by the preaching of St. Paul, came, and confessed, and showed their deeds. Many of them, also, who used curious arts, brought their books together and burned them before all men. The sin had been a public one; so was the confession. When a culprit is condemned amongst ourselves, we justly feel that his repentance is unsatisfactory until his crime is acknowledged and the justice of his sentence confessed. His confession is no atonement; it was not held to be so in Achan's case, for all Israel stoned him with stones that he died; yet it "gives glory to God," inasmuch as it is an acknowledgment of His justice and equity. When St. Paul himself, in a moment of inadvertence, and with too much warmth, as his tender conscience instantly perceived, had rebuked the injustice of the High Priest sitting upon the judgment-seat, he instantly confessed; not however in the retirement of the confessional, not waiting for the ear of a brother apostle in whom to confide his error, but there and then, in the presence of the multitude. How truly noble this confession seems! What a con

trast with the meanness which slinks aside and dares not face the party it has injured, but seeks relief in whispering privately to another its sense of shame!

Amongst the corruptions of the Church of Rome, none is worse than this; first, that it substitutes a Clergy for a Church, and then invests them with a Priesthood. The Confessional, with all its horrors, belongs to this false notion of a Priesthood. The subject is one on which we are not disposed to dwell. The delicacy of English minds revolts, and the purity of the Gospel forbids. But we shall not be deterred from calmly asserting that the Inquisition itself, in comparison with the Confessional, was a mild and gentle instrument of spiritual despotism. That torments the body, this racks the soul. The Inquisitor, having slain the body, has power; "he has no more that he can do," and we defy him. The more he refines his tortures, the sooner his victim is released. But the confessing Priest works upon more enduring materials, and upon a subject more keenly suffering. He tortures an undying soul!

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That men should have been found amongst ourselves, wearing