“To object to the power of the priest to forgive sins is, according to this [the Roman Catholic] view, equivalent to objecting to the power of Christ to forgive sins. Is this to be maintained? Is this true?” Since to doubt Christ’s declaration is to call his power in question, we affirm that this is true and is to be maintained. If the words of Christ are fallible, it must follow that he who spoke them is also fallible. “Whose sins ye shall forgive they are forgiven,” and “Whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven”: Falsify these statements, and we make God a liar. Of the exercise of this power St. Paul says to the Corinthians: “If I forgave any, for your sakes forgave I it, in the person of Christ”; and in condemning the incestuous Corinthian he judges him “with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Now, if St. Paul was indeed acting with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in his person, his absolution and condemnation were identical with Christ’s. If not, his arrogations were blasphemous and vain.
But Bishop Atkinson asserts that “priestly absolution and the absolution of Christ are two entirely distinct things,” because the priest cannot have God’s infallible knowledge of the state of the soul, on which condition forgiveness depends.
Here is a confounding of things wholly different—the power of absolution, and knowledge infallible. Forgiveness does depend upon the state of the soul, and, whether it be Christ or one of his ambassadors pronouncing absolution, the conditions requisite are absolutely one. Nor Christ nor his priest can pardon the impenitent; but infallible knowledge of the state of the soul affects in no way the power of absolution. God reveals to any man his own soul’s condition, but to no man is given the power of self-absolution. So, also, he grants the power of absolution apart from the gift of infallible knowledge. The things are distinct and separate from each other. The latter of these powers our Lord alone possesses, but he seems not unfrequently, in the exercise of his ministry, to have purposely excluded all its influence over the former, to teach us that the two have no necessary dependence. Thus, he invests St. Peter with the power of the keys a short time before the fall of that apostle, and administers to Judas the clean Bread of Angels when he knows him to be a devil. Could a priest’s want of insight have results more appalling? But Bishop Atkinson here proposes
a method most ingenious for testing priestly power, a “practical test” to be applied as follows: “When the power of Christ to forgive sins was doubted, he wrought a miracle to prove it, and thereby silenced the gainsayers. When the power of the priest to forgive sins is doubted, as it very frequently and very seriously is, can he work a miracle to demonstrate it?”
To demand a miracle in the sacrament of penance as a “practical test” of sacerdotal power is also to require it in every other sacrament and sacerdotal function. Has Bishop Atkinson tested by this rule his baptisms, confirmations, communions, and, first of all, his orders? A “practical test” is of general application. When a child is baptized, the Episcopal clergyman thus speaks to the sponsors: “Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, that this child is regenerate and grafted into Christ’s church, let us give thanks unto Almighty God for these benefits.” Here, should his “practical test” be demanded to verify this statement, could the bishop produce it? Again, at the end of a marriage he says: “I pronounce you man and wife,” and “Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.” Is the clergyman then God? Else whence this change from first to third person?
How far, we are asked, in the judgment of a “thorough-going Roman Catholic”—one who is blind enough to take God at his word, while all the world smiles at his childish credulity—does the priest’s power of absolution actually extend? In the ordination service of the Episcopalian Prayer-Book stands this Catholic formula:
“Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a priest in the church of
God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained. And be thou a faithful dispenser of the word of God and of his holy sacraments; in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
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Now, the Catholic believes the church means what she affirms; that the literal declaration is the literal truth, since God himself spake it. He therefore receives the priest in Christ’s person, believing that the sins which he remits are remitted. But he knows the conditions upon which depends his cure when he seeks divine remedies. He knows that Christ himself cannot pardon the impenitent, and that the humble priest is not greater than his Master; but, upon the same conditions that the Son of God required, he believes the priest’s decision must be ratified in heaven. He remembers, too, the promises vouchsafed to those receiving, and the overwhelming curse pronounced on those rejecting, the messenger of Christ—a judgment more dread than that on Tyre and Sidon.