[93] The question of the Origin of the Christian Ministry has been discussed in another volume of this series. See the Pastoral Epistles, pp. 104-117 (Hodder and Stoughton, 1888).
[94] For additional evidence see J. C. Wolf, Curæ Philol. et Crit. V., pp. 79-81; Lightfoot, Horæ Hebr. II., pp. 304, 444, on Matt. vi. 17 and Mark vi. 13; Launoi, De Sacramento Unctionis Infirmorum, I., p. 444.
[95] See letters in the Guardian of Mar. 12, 19, Apr. 9, 16, 23, May 7, 1890; pp. 447, 481, 594, 633, 682, 763.
In the Visitation of the Sick in the First Prayer Book of Edward VI. there is provision for the older rite: "If the sicke person desyre to be annoynted, then shall the priest annoynte him upon the forehead or breast only, making the signe of the crosse, saying thus, As with this visible oyle thy body outwardly is annoynted: so our heavenly father almyghtye God graunt of his infinite goodnesse, that thy soule inwardly may be annoynted with the holy gost, who is the spirite of al strength, comforte, reliefe, and gladnesse. And vouchsafe for his great mercy (yf it be his blessed will) to restore unto thee thy bodely helth and strength, to serve him," etc.
Readers of the Confessions will remember how St. Augustine on one occasion asked his friends to pray that he might be freed from great pain, and forthwith found relief. "I have neither forgotten nor will be silent about the severity of Thy scourge, and the marvellous speed of Thy mercy. Thou didst then torture me with toothache (he says elsewhere that this was so grievous that he could learn nothing fresh, but could only think of what he already knew), and when the pain became so severe that I was unable to speak the thought rose in my heart to urge all my friends who were present to pray for me to Thee, the God of all health. And I wrote this on a waxen tablet, and gave it to them to read. Presently, as with suppliant desire we bowed our knees, that great pain fled away. But what pain? and how did it flee? I confess, my Lord and my God, that it frightened me; for from my earliest days I had experienced nothing like it" (IX. iv. 12).
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE CONFESSION OF SINS.
THE LAWFULNESS OF PRAYERS FOR RAIN.
"Confess therefore your sins one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The supplication of a righteous man availeth much in its working. Elijah was a man of like passions with us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain; and it rained not on the earth for three years and six months. And he prayed again; and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit."—St. James v. 16-18.
THE connexion of this passage with the preceding one is very close. This is evident even in the Authorized Version; but it is made still more manifest by the Revisers, who have restored the connecting "therefore" to the text upon overwhelming authority. St. James is passing from the particular case of the sick person to something more general, viz. mutual confession of sins. If we draw out his thought in full, it will be something of this kind: "Even if the sick person be suffering the consequences of his sins, nevertheless the faith and prayers of the elders, combined with his own, shall prevail for his forgiveness and healing. Of course he must confess and bewail his sins: if he does not admit them and repent of them, he can hope for nothing. Therefore you ought all of you habitually to confess your sins to one another, and to intercede for one another, in order that when sickness comes upon you, you may the more readily be healed." It is not quite certain that the word rendered "ye may be healed" (ἰαθῇτε) ought to be limited to bodily healing; but the context seems to imply that the cure of bodily disorders is still in the mind of St. James. If, however, with various commentators, we take it to mean "that your souls may be healed," then there is no need to supply any such thought as "when sickness comes upon you."
It might surprise us to find that the practice of auricular confession to a priest is deduced from the precept, "Confess your sins one to another," if we had not the previous experience of finding the rite of Extreme Unction deduced from the precept respecting the anointing of the sick. But here also Cajetan has the credit of admitting that no Scriptural authority for the Roman practice can be found in the words of St. James. The all-important "to one another" (ἀλλήλοις) is quite fatal to the interpretation of confession to a priest. If the confession of a layman to a priest is meant, then the confession of a priest to a layman is equally meant: the words, whether in the Greek or in the English, cannot be otherwise understood. But the injunction is evidently quite general, and the distinction between clergy and laity does not enter into it at all: each Christian, whether elder or layman, is to confess to other Christians, whether elders or laymen, either to one or to many, as the case may be. When the sick person just spoken of confessed his sins, he confessed them to the elders of the Church, because they were present; they did not come to receive his confession, but to pray for him and to anoint him. He sent for them, not because he wished to confess to them, but because he was sick. Even if he had had nothing to confess to them—a case evidently contemplated by St. James as not only possible, but common—he would still have sent for them. So far from its being among their functions as elders to hear the sick man's confession, St. James seems rather to imply that he ought to have made it previously to others. If Christians habitually confess their sins to one another, there will be no special confession required when any of them falls ill. But granting that this interpretation of his brief directions is not quite certain, it is quite certain that what he commends is the confession of any Christian to any Christian, and not the confession of laity to presbyters. About that he says nothing, either one way or the other, for it is not in his mind. He neither sanctions nor forbids it, but he gives a direction which shows that as regards the duty of confession to man, the normal condition of things is for any Christian to confess to any Christian. The important point is that the sinner should not keep his guilty secret locked up in his own bosom; to whom he should tell it is left to his own discretion. As Tertullian says, in his treatise On Penance, "Confession of sins lightens as much as concealment (dissimulatio) aggravates them. For confession is prompted by the desire to make amends; concealment is prompted by contumacy" (viii.). Similarly Origen, on Psalm xxxvii.: "See, therefore, what the Divine Scripture teaches us, that we must not conceal sin within us. For just as, it may be, people who have undigested food detained inside them, or are otherwise grievously oppressed internally, if they vomit, obtain relief, so they also who have sinned, if they conceal and retain the sin, are oppressed inwardly. But if the sinner becomes his own accuser, accuses himself and confesses, he at the same time vomits out both the sin and the whole cause of his malady" (Homil. II. 6). In much the same strain Chrysostom writes, "Sin, if it is confessed, becomes less; but if it is not confessed, worse; for if the sinner adds shamelessness and obstinacy to his sin, he will never stop. How, indeed, will such a one be at all able to guard himself from falling again into the same sins, if in the earlier case he was not conscious that he sinned.... Let us not merely call ourselves sinners, but let us make a reckoning of our sins, counting them according to their kind, one by one.... If thou art of the persuasion that thou art a sinner, this is not able so much to humble thy soul as the very catalogue of thy sins examined into according to their kind" (Homil. xxx. in Ep. ad Hebr.)