The following passage clearly shows that the great Light of the Church of Milan is speaking of confession to Priests: “There are some,” continues St. Ambrose, “who ask for penance that they may at once be restored to Communion. These do not so much desire to be loosed as to bind the Priest; for they do not unburden their conscience, but they burden his, who is commanded not to give holy things unto dogs—that is, not easily to admit impure souls to the Holy Communion.”[448]
Paulinus, the secretary of St. Ambrose, in his life of that great Bishop relates that he used to weep over the penitents whose confessions he heard.
St. Augustine writes: “Our merciful God wills us to confess in this world that we may not be confounded in the other.”[449] And again: “Let no one say to himself, I do penance to God in private, I do it before God. Is it then in vain that Christ hath said, ‘Whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven?’ Is it in vain that the keys have been given to the Church? Do we make void the Gospel, void the words of Christ?”[450]
In this extract how well doth the great Doctor meet the sophistry of those who, in our times, say that it is sufficient to confess to God!
St. Chrysostom, in his thirtieth Homily, says: “Lo! we have now, at length, reached the close of Holy Lent; now especially we must press forward in the career of fasting, ... and exhibit a full and accurate confession of our sins, ... that with these good works, having come to the day of Easter, we may enjoy the bounty of the Lord.... For, as the enemy knows that having confessed our sins and shown our wounds to the physician we attain to an abundant cure, he in an especial manner opposes us.”
Again he says: “Do not confess to me only of fornication, nor of those things that are manifest among all men, but bring together also thy secret calumnies and evil speakings, ... and all such things.”[451]
The great Doctor plainly enjoins here a detailed and specific confession of our sins not to God, but to His minister, as the whole context evidently shows.
The same Father, in an eloquent treatise on the power of the sacred ministry, uses the following words: “To the Priests is given a power which God would not grant either to angels or archangels; inasmuch that what the Priests do below God ratifies above, and the Master confirms the sentence of His servants. For, He says, ‘Whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.’
“What power, I ask, can be greater than this? The Father hath given all power to the Son; and I see all this same power delivered to them by God the Son.
“To cleanse the leprosy of the body, or rather to [pg 349] pronounce it cleansed, was given to the Jewish Priests alone. But to our Priests is granted the power not of declaring healed the leprosy of the body, but of absolutely cleansing the defilements of the soul.”[452]