rowed from the discipline of the Jewish synagogue. In the primitive Christian Church it related only to such persons as had been excluded from the communion of the Church. In times of persecution some, through fear of suffering or death, apostatized, and when peace was restored desired to return. In such cases penance was imposed. Its object was not so much the forgiveness of the offender by the Lord God as that offender's reconciliation to the Church. The early Church fathers declare expressly that the Church offers pardon only for offenses against herself; the forgiveness of all sin is with God. In process of time penance was applied to all sin after baptism; public confession became auricular, and ultimately the rite was elevated into a sacrament. In relation to penance the Council of Trent decreed as follows: That Jesus instituted this sacrament when he breathed upon his disciples, saying, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost" (John 20. 22); that in this sacrament the priest exercises the function of a judge; that the form of the sacrament is contained in the form of the absolution pronounced by the priest; that the penitential acts are contrition, confession, and satisfaction, which are, as it were, the matter of the sacrament; that an imperfect contrition is called attrition, when it arises from a sense of shame for the sin committed; that if this be accompanied by a hope of forgiveness, and if it exclude the desire to commit sin, it is the work of the Holy Spirit, and disposes the penitent to obtain the grace of God in the sacrament of penance; that it is necessary to confess every mortal sin that can be brought to mind; that the power of binding and loosing is in the priest only; that this consists in not merely declaring the remission of sins, but in the judicial act by which they are remitted; that great crimes should not be absolved by every priest, but reserved for the first order;

that we can make satisfaction to God by self-imposed inflictions, and by those which the priest prescribes.1

The imposition by the priest of penance is the condition on which temporal punishment for the sin will be remitted, while the eternal consequences are forgiven for the sake of the merits of Jesus Christ. "These temporal penalties may be exacted in this life or in the intermediate state, both being temporal. . . . On this sacrament of penance hangs the doctrine of purgatory, the scene where the supreme satisfaction of Christ is supplemented; as also indulgences, based on the fund of merit stored in the Church, and granted avowedly for the remission of temporal penalty, often, in popular acceptation, for the remission of all sin whatever."2

Penance, however, cannot be said to have "any visible sign or ceremony ordained of God." The matter is wanting; but the Roman doctors are equal to the occasion and call contrition, confession, and satisfaction "quasi materia"-matter, after a sort. Wesley writes: "We grant confession to men to be in many cases of use: public, in case of public scandal; private, to a spiritual guide for disburdening of the conscience, and as a help to repentance. But to make auricular confession, or particular confession to a priest, necessary to forgiveness and salvation, when God has not so made it, is apparently to teach for doctrine the commandment of men."

Protestant theology teaches that penance has no foundation whatever in Scripture, and is contrary to some of the most essential principles of the Christian religion; particularly to justification by faith in Jesus Christ alone on the ground of his complete or finished work; the theory of penance being, in fact, founded upon a doctrine of at least supplementary atonement by the works or suffer

1 Sess. XIV. 2 Pope. Theology, vol. iii, p. 308.

Works, vol. v, p. 79a.

ings of man. Can anything make a satisfaction to God save the obedience and suffering of his Son? What need of another satisfaction after that of the Saviour? "By one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified" (Heb. 10. 14). The song of the redeemed will be, "Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen” (Rev. 1. 5, 6).

Orders

The Council of Trent declares, "Ordination is truly and properly a sacrament, and doth confer grace, and whoso denies this is accursed." Moreover, it anathematizes "those who deny that orders imprint an ineffaceable character."

In reply to this stand the plain pronouncements of Protestant theologians: "Once more the outward sign cannot be traced back to the gospel or to our Lord's own ordinance. Moreover, the grace given in it is official, rather than for the personal sanctification of the recipient."2 "We account ordination to be of divine institution, and that by it a ministerial commission is conveyed; but how necessary soever this office is to the Church, and grace for the exercise of it, yet as that grace is not promised to it we cannot admit it to be properly and truly a sacrament." 993

Archbishop Secker declares that if ordination were a sacrament there would be as many sacraments as there are orders; "but indeed," he says, "there is none: for the laying on of hands in ordination is neither appointed nor used to signify any spiritual grace, but only to confer

1 Sess. VII, chap. i.

2 Gibson on the Articles, p. 605.

Wesley, Works, vol. v, p. 794.

a right of executing such an office in the Church of Christ. And though prayers for God's grace and blessing on the person ordained, are indeed very justly and usefully added, and will certainly be heard unless the person be unworthy, yet these prayers on this occasion no more make a sacrament than any other prayers for God's grace on any other occasion."1

canons.

Matrimony

The Council of Trent at its twenty-fourth session (1563) legislated on the subject of matrimony in twelve The first reads: "Whoever shall affirm matrimony is not truly and properly one of the seven sacraments of the evangelical law, instituted by Christ our Lord, but that it is a human invention introduced into the Church, and does not confer grace, let him be accursed."2

There are many points in relation to marriage in which Romanists and Protestants agree, but as to its constituting a sacrament they totally disagree. The Roman Church bases its view, in part, upon the words of Saint Paul: "This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church" (Eph. 5. 32, R. V.). The rendering of this passage in the Vulgate is, "Sacramentum hoc magnum est." Archbishop Secker says upon this: "But the whole matter is, that they have happened most ridiculously to mistake their own Latin translation of the New Testament, where Saint Paul, having compared the union between the first married pair, Adam and Eve, to that between Christ, the Second Adam, and his spouse the Church; and having said that this is a great mystery; a figure, or comparison, not fully and common

1 Sermon on the Sacraments.

3 Green on the Articles, p. 194.

*Sess. XXIV, chap. i.

ly understood; the old interpreter, whose version they use, for mystery hath put sacrament, which in his days. signified anything in religion that carried a hidden meaning, and they have understood him of what we now call a sacrament, whereas, if everything that once had that name in the larger sense of the word were at present to have it in the stricter sense, there would be a hundred sacraments instead of the seven which they pretend there are."1

The Church of Rome acknowledges that a sacrament must be instituted by Christ, yet though the Council of Trent declared that matrimony is a sacrament so instituted there is no proof of this. In every sacrament there must be "an outward and visible sign"; in marriage there is none. It is inconsistent also to regard marriage as a sacrament, and at the same time disparage it in refusing it to the clergy, and to teach the superior sanctity of a celibate life. The Lateran Council says, "Those in holy orders are the temple of God, and it is a shameful thing that they should serve uncleanness."2 To this Wesley replies: "The apostle, on the contrary, saith, 'Marriage is honorable in all' (Heb. 13. 4), and gives a hard character of that doctrine which forbids it (1 Tim. 4. 1-3). And how lawful it was the direction of the apostle about it (1 Tim. 3. 2) doth show. And how convenient it is, is manifest from the mischiefs attending the prohibition of it in the Romish Church, which wise men among themselves have lamented."3 Marriage, though not a sacrament, is a religious rite, a divine institution.

Extreme Unction

Extreme unction is administered by the priests to the sick who are supposed to be past recovery, and is believed

1 Sermon on the Sacraments.

Council II, chap. vi.

Works, vol. v, p. 795.