4. But such confession is not to be made, save in case of serious illness or of great disquiet of mind.
5. The absolution of the priest is not the ordinary means by which sins are forgiven.
6. The penitent is to be the judge in his own case. If he feels very much in want of confession, he may have it; if not, he is to do without it. His own feeling is the only rule in the matter.
We think our readers will admit that the above statements are in no way an unfair summary of the teaching of the Church of England as represented by her formularies. Certainly they give no warrant for the assertion now made by the High-Church party that confession is the ordinary remedy for post-baptismal sin, or to the practice of frequent and regular confession which is now so widely advocated and followed. Confession is evidently, according to the teaching of Anglicanism, what it has been well called by an Anglican, a “luxury.” How, it may be asked, can men who are pledged to teach and maintain the doctrines of the Church of England act in direct opposition to the instructions which she has given them? We do not maintain that those instructions have the appearance of being all the expression of the same convictions. There is an apparent discrepancy existing amongst them; they are not consistent with each other. But the one broad fact is plain as daylight: they do not countenance the present action of extreme Anglicans. Lookers-on constantly ask, Are these men sincere? Why do they not “go over to Rome”? Are they not traitors in the Anglican camp? To these questions we can only reply: We judge not; each individual must stand or fall to his own master; but we cannot hesitate in saying that ritualism as a system is dishonest, and that the position occupied by its adherents is the most untenable that any man can undertake to defend.
If we seek for the reason why men whom we are ready to believe upright and honorable act in a manner which is apparently absolutely incompatible with their solemn engagements, it may perhaps be discovered by a consideration of one of the chief characteristics of the Church of England.
St. Paul speaks of the church of Christ as “the pillar and ground of the truth.” The Church of England is essentially a compromise. Some of her dignitaries even look on this as her glory: the High-Churchman can find his belief in the Real Presence supported by her catechism, but the Low-Churchman has the black rubric, which is equally strong in favor of his opinion; her prayers are for the most part preserved from the days of Catholic piety, and her Articles bear the impress of foreign heresy; she prays against “false doctrine, heresy, and schism,” and devotes one of her Articles to the assertion that all churches have erred. Her clergy are required to accept anomalies and inconsistencies; and we cannot but do them the justice to say that they accept them with great equanimity. Every one has something to get over: the High-Churchman could wish some things altered, and the Low-Churchman would be glad to see others omitted; the result seems to be that every one subscribes with a kind of laxity which, if it does not imply a want of honesty, at least betrays an absence of accuracy and of definite conviction. Subscription to articles and formularies seems to sit very lightly on the Anglican conscience; it is a mere means to an end.
But the Anglican clergyman not only pledges himself to the doctrines of the Prayer-book and Articles; he also promises obedience to his bishop. Here is something apparently definite. In the voice of a living bishop there can hardly be the same scope for diversity as the pages of the Prayer-book afford. Generally speaking, the Anglican bishops condemn the practice of confession; if they were really rulers in their communion there can be no doubt that the High-Church party would long since have been extinct. As a fact, the Anglican does not obey his bishop; at this very moment one of the leading High-Church clergy of London has definitely and deliberately refused to obey his bishop by removing from his church a crucifix and a picture of Our Lady, which he believes tend to promote devotion among his flock.
For the reasons which lead conscientious men to disobey the ordinary whose godly admonitions they have engaged with a glad mind and will to follow, and to whose godly judgments they have promised with God’s help to submit, we must again look to the peculiar theories of the Church of England. It is hardly necessary to say that the Church of England does not in any way or under any circumstances claim infallibility; nay, more, she goes out of her way to deny its very existence. One of her Articles asserts that the churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome have erred in matters of faith, and another follows up this assertion by the kindred statement that general councils may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining to God. She indeed daily professes her belief in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, but she does not inform her children where and how the voice of that church is to be heard. She constantly asserts the authority of Holy Scripture, but she recognizes no authority competent to interpret Scripture in a decisive manner. Under the influence of such teaching it is not surprising that there should exist in the Church of England two theories regarding authority in matters of faith. One is that there is no authority save Holy Scripture. Everything must be proved by Scripture; and as there is no one necessarily better entitled than another to explain Scripture, this virtually amounts to a recognition of the right and duty of private judgment to its fullest extent. The other theory is based on belief in the One Catholic Church. It admits that our Lord appointed his church to teach men all truth; it believes that the voice of the church in primitive times was the voice of God; it doubts not that at a former period the church was guided by the Spirit of God, but it holds that supernatural guidance to be in abeyance; it recognizes no living voice of the church; it looks forward with a vague hope to the reunion of Catholics, Greeks, and Anglicans, and the possibility in such a case of a general council being held, whose decisions would bind all Christendom. In the meantime the church is dumb, if not dead, and all that can be done is to turn with a reverent mind to the study of antiquity, to an examination of what has been handed down from the days of pure and undoubted faith. This last is the theory of the High-Church party in general. To their mind a bishop is a necessity; he is required for the conferring of orders and for giving confirmation; he is not the centre of sacrificial power in his diocese, nor the source of jurisdiction; he is not a teacher in any other sense beyond that in which they are themselves teachers; their obedience to him is not an obedience to one whom our Lord has set over his flock with a special charge to feed his sheep as well as his lambs; it is an obedience rendered to one who is officially a superior—an obedience which has no direct reference to God, and which is constantly evaded (it may be in perfect good faith) on the principle that “we ought to obey God rather than man.”
Another cause which has probably much to do with the apparent inconsistencies of the High-Church Anglican clergy is the fact that they are in a great many cases absorbed and overwhelmed by an amount of active work which leaves little leisure for the serious examination of their position. It is admitted on all sides that the last century was a period of spiritual apathy and deadness as far as the Church of England was concerned. The movement of the past forty years has not been merely in the direction of Catholic doctrine, but it has also led to a renewal of zeal, to energy and self-sacrifice, which we cannot but appreciate. The poor, the young, the ignorant, and the fallen are cared for with a charity whose root is, we trust, to be found in the increased knowledge of the life and of the love of our Lord. But even works of mercy have their snares; a man who is toiling night and day among the outcast and the poor of great cities, who sees the results of his labor in the reformed life of many a wanderer, and who also sees pressing on him needs which he can never fully satisfy, must be sorely tempted to turn a deaf ear to all such questionings as would stay his course. He hears people’s confessions, and he sees them turn to God and lead better lives; naturally he concludes that all is right, and he resents any interference with a practice which is apparently so salutary.
We have now given a short and, we hope, a fair idea of confession as it exists at present in the Anglican communion. We must add, for the information of those who have not had the opportunity of watching the progress of events in England, that the practice of confession was unknown, or almost unknown, in the Anglican communion until about five-and-thirty years ago. It was one of the first fruits of that turning back to the old Catholic paths which by God’s blessing has led so many souls into the Church. The movement still goes on; it has passed through different phases, and year by year it brings one after another to the very threshold of their true home; they enter in and are at rest, and find the reality of all that they had hitherto sought and longed for.