LECTURE IV.

ON THE CONFESSIONAL.

THROUGHOUT the Christian Church, whether amongst Roman Catholics, Greeks, or Protestants, the assiduity with which a minister visits the dif ferent individuals of his flock in private is considered the truest test of his efficiency. If there be such things as advice and consolation needed, sought for and afforded, it is impossible that such should be given with any particularity and detail, otherwise than to each individual separately. According as the ministers visit for this end, so do the people love them; and according as they do not visit, the people consider themselves neglected.

Out of this spiritual necessity and godly practice grew up the system of the confessional, with all its tyrannical and demoralising details, such as the Roman Catholic Clergy have made it and it is very requisite to distinguish between the different

ways of conducting it, because the use is commonly confounded with the abuse, and men rail against auricular confession, who are, nevertheless, in the habit, as laymen, of speaking in private in the ear of a priest, and who are, as Clergy, in the habit of speaking in private to all the members of their flocks of both sexes, old and young.

Whatever evil or impropriety might attend the custom of visiting in the private houses of the people, or the people visiting the private lodgings of the priest, it is clear that those evils would be obviated by the Clergy never meeting with them for such purposes but in the public church, and in a place appropriated for that object.

"Under the most sacred seal of confession," has been the expression, in all ages, for that which is most solemn, most secret, and most confidential. We read, however, in Arnot's "Collection of the Criminal Laws in Scotland," that, in the year 1670, the Presbyterian minister of Ormestone gave in evidence against a prisoner the confession which had been made to him by that prisoner, who had sent for him in prison in order to confess his sins to him; and the man was executed. Upon this transaction, Mr. Arnot makes the following observations" In countries where the Roman Catholic religion is professed, the priest who betrays what is communicated to him in confession, is (I am told)

burnt alive. When the Reformed Clergy renounced the errors of Popery, they were too wise to reject in practice so powerful an instrument in the hands of the priesthood as auricular confession. I leave it to casuists in religion to determine as to the efficacy of auricular confession in the salvation of the soul; but I cannot help thinking, that for a priest to reveal this confession in a criminal court, to the destruction of the body, deserves to be placed nigh the top of the scale of human depravity."

Certainly so flagrant an instance of a "traitor under the form of godliness" excites the disgust and indignation of every mind whose moral sense has not been deadened by perverted religion-a no uncommon case. One example of this sort was sufficient to drive the practice of confession out from amongst the people; and it may be gathered from the history of the times, that the violation of its sanctity, even more than the ordinary abuse of the rite, contributed to eradicate it from the Reformed Churches.

In proportion as every instrument is powerful, so is it capable of use and of abuse. The abuse of any thing in unskilful or wicked hands is a silly reason for not employing it by skilful and good hands, and any one who so argues manifests only his own incapacity to deal with the matter. The juices of many vegetables produce no effect what

ever upon the animal system; they which do are employed as remedies for disease; and in proportion as they are efficacious in the hands of persons who know how to employ them, so do they become most deadly poisons in the hands of others. A drug which produces no violent effect in any case is not worth employing; but no physician yet was ever absurd enough to give as a reason for his not employing opium or calomel, that some ignorant man might poison people; if he did allege such a reason, it would furnish just ground to conclude that he at least was incompetent to administer the drug.

It is perfectly obvious that the Reformers did not reform by any other means than by defacing; neither could they and in this case they were right. If there were found in a peasant's cottage a quantity of good or valuable drugs, such as calomel, prussic acid, arsenic, &c., and some of the family had been poisoned by them, that peasant should be advised to throw the whole out of the window: but if the same were found in the house of a physician, although some one had also there been poisoned, that physician should not destroy the drugs, but be more careful for the time to come. If an unskilful man be found with a quantity of medicine, which he is going of himself to throw away, because some one has been poisoned by it, he would act rightly;

but by that very act he proves his own incompetency to use it. So it is now; every one who wishes to discard from Christendom much that prevails there, because it was discarded at the time of the Reformation, only proves, not that the things are evil, but his own inability to employ them aright. The bishops of the Church of England at that period could do no better; but we can and must and the end for which God has given us clearer light is that such things may be put in order, and not despised or rejected.

It is an

Such is the case with the confessional. instrument of such immense power, that in the hands of wicked priests it became the means of abuse to an extent which, to Protestants, cannot be explained fully, and, therefore, they cannot comprehend it and it is but just and reasonable to vindicate the Reformers in formally suppressing that which, owing to the habits both of the priests and of the people, it had become impossible to amend; and it is not in times of heat, when men's passions are inflamed by disputes, that real reformation can be effected: reformation consisting not in destruction, but in recovering that which has been abused from perversion, and restoring it to its legitimate purpose.

The Church of England, however, still calls upon every one who is so disturbed in his con