Just the same doctrine of the forgiveness of sins, not through auricular confession or absolution, but through the preaching of the Word: "Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins" (Acts xiii. 38).
3. The third thing which is evident is that the Apostles were not alone when Christ appeared and spoke, but that several of His other disciples, even some women, were there.
If the Romanists, then, could prove that Christ established auricular confession, and gave the power of absolution, by what He said in that solemn hour, women as well as men—in fact, every believer in Christ—would be authorized to hear confessions and give absolution. The Holy Ghost was not promised or given only to the Apostles, but to every believer, as we see in Acts i. 15, and ii. 1, 2, 3.
But the Gospel of Christ, as the history of the first ten centuries of Christianity, is the witness that auricular confession and absolution are nothing else but a sacrilegious as well as a most stupendous imposture.
What tremendous efforts the priests of Rome have made these last five centuries, and are still making, to persuade their dupes that the Son of God was making of them a privileged caste, a caste endowed with the Divine and exclusive power of opening and shutting the gates of Heaven, when He said, "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven."
But our adorable Saviour, who perfectly foresaw those diabolical efforts on the part of the priests of Rome, entirely upset every vestige of their foundation by saying immediately, "Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in Heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matt. xviii. 19, 20).
Would the priests of Rome attempt to make us believe that these words of the 19th and 20th verses are addressed to them exclusively? They have not yet dared to say it. They confess that these words are addressed to all His disciples. But our Saviour positively says that the other words, implicating the so-called power of the priests to hear the confession and give the absolution, are addressed to the very same persons—"I say unto you," &c., &c. The you of the 19th and 20th verses is the same you of the 18th. The power of loosing and unloosing is, then, given to all—those who would be offended and would forgive. Then, our Saviour had not in His mind to form a caste of men with any marvellous power over the rest of His disciples. The priests of Rome, then, are impostors, and nothing else, when they say that the power of loosing and unloosing sins was exclusively granted to them.
Instead of going to the confessor, let the Christian go to his merciful God, through Christ, and say, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us." This is the Truth, not as it comes from the Vatican, but as it comes from Calvary, where our debts were paid, with the only condition that we should believe, repent, and love.
Have not the Popes publicly and repeatedly anathematized the sacred principle of Liberty of Conscience? Have they not boldly said, in the teeth of the nations of Europe, that Liberty of Conscience must be destroyed—killed at any cost? Has not the whole world heard the sentence of death to Liberty coming from the lips of the old man of the Vatican? But where is the scaffold on which the doomed Liberty must perish? That scaffold is the confessional-box. Yes, in the confessional, the Pope had his 100,000 high executioners! There they are, day and night, with-sharp daggers in hand, stabbing Liberty to the heart.
In vain will noble France expel her old tyrants to be free; in vain will she shed the purest blood of her heart to protect and save Liberty! True Liberty cannot live a day there so long as the executioners of the Pope are free to stab her on their 100,000 scaffolds.